News & Events

UbuntuNet Alliance, the research and education network for Eastern and Southern Africa; and DANTE, the operator of GÉANT, the pan-European research and education network, today announce the commissioning of the UbuntuNet network, the regional high-speed Internet network connecting researchers, educators and students in Eastern and Southern Africa to their peers in the region and to Europe.

The African research and education community has for far too long carried the burden of slow Internet connectivity which has consequently widened the gap between the continent’s researchers and their peers globally. The establishment of national research and education networks (NRENs), the regional UbuntuNet Alliance, and the kick off of the AfricaConnect are milestones transforming the research and education landscape on the continent.

According to an article published in ‘NUANCE: Newsletter of the UbuntuNet Alliance: Networks, Collaboration, Education’, having a well-trained technical team is paramount to operating and maintaining the high speed UbuntuNet Network. So far, the Alliance has trained about 40 network engineers from almost all NREN Members in Eastern and Southern Africa. The trainings are a result of a multi-partner capacity building programme and the focus has primarily been on advanced routing and campus network design and management.

The goal of UbuntuNet Alliance capacity building program is to ensure that there is enough human resource capacity in Member NRENs to be able to plan, implement and operate advanced data networks. Also the Alliance would like to ensure that NREN networks are properly designed and configured in time for connection to the regional UbuntuNet backbone being built under the AfricaConnect project; and to provide technical support to the Alliance in the running of UbuntuNet.

Proceedings and report of the 6th UbuntuNet Alliance annual conference [Full Text PDF]

Peer reviewed papers

• Anbu, J , et al, (2013). Content Alert System Using Short Message Service (SMS): A Testimony of two Collaborative Projects in Africa and Asia [Full Text PDF]
• Barbera, R, et al, (2013). The CHAIN-REDS Semantic Search Engine [Full Text PDF]
• Chiome, C, (2013). e-Infrastructure Acceptance in e-Health, e-Learning and e-Agriculture in Zimbabwe: The Quest for the User Acceptance Variable [Full Text PDF]

The eI4Africa third workshop “Leveraging Science Gateways & Virtual Research Communities in African e-Science” is taking place on March 19, 2014 in Lagos, Nigeria. Organised by the West and Central African Research and Education Network (WACREN) and the UbuntuNet Alliance in collaboration with Sigma Orionis and all the eI4Africa consortium members, the workshop is co-hosted by the Center for Atmospheric Research (CAR), an activity centre of the Nigerian National Space Research and Development Agency (NASRDA), and the Eko-Konnect Research and Education Initiative.

The eastern and southern Africa region waited long for the deployment of the reliable regional data communication e-infrastructure that is now coming online through AfricaConnect and the expansion of the UbuntuNet network.  With burgeoning youthful population and low access rates to higher education in eastern and southern Africa, the potential for improvements in education delivery through creative use of new information technology resources is endless. In addition, the network presents many possibilities in research, including enabling regional and global collaboration  for researchers in addressing issues of national and regional significance. In both, NRENs are perceived as key players nationally. The annual UbuntuNet-Connect conference provides the appropriate forum to showcase progress in research and education networking in Africa.

According to an article posted by ei4africa.eu, a second version of the Intra-Africa optical fibre network map produced by UbuntuNet Alliance has been published. This follows an extensive exercise carried out in 2012 by Donna Namujju with the help of Steve Song of Manypossibilities.net.