Africa urged to set-up research and education networks

By Iddi Yire, GNA
Accra, May 28, GNA - Professor Nii Narku Quaynor, the Chairman of the Internet Society (ISOC), Ghana Chapter and Africa Internet pioneer, has urged African countries to set-up the National Research and Education Network (NREN) to enhance academic activities.

The NREN is a specialised internet service provider dedicated to supporting the needs of research and education within a country.

He lauded the Ghanaian Academic and Research Network, the local version of NREN, which facilitates more effective integration of information and communications technology into the higher education's core mandate of teaching, learning, research, and information management in Ghana.

Prof Quaynor, who was speaking to the Ghana News Agency in Accra, said all of Africa was supposed to be connected to create the NREN.

He said there were three blocks of the NREN on the continent: the Arab State Education Research Network in North Africa, the Obuntu Network Alliance in Eastern and Southern Africa, and the West and Central African Research Network.

He said the NREN was being implemented in Africa in collaboration with the European Union within the next three years.

'When this is fully accomplished, it means that researchers in Africa can collaborate among themselves by sharing all kinds of university infrastructure from laboratories to observatories to libraries to teachers to students,' he said.

On the adoption of the Internet Protocol (IP) resources by universities, Prof. Quaynor urged African universities to acquire their own IP platforms to increase and amalgamate current networking activities.

He said: 'By this the academic institutions are moving but it may not be in the public view; they are buried in campuses and we are trying to open up the campuses so that they can share resources among themselves and eventually on the continent.'

He appealed to African universities to hurriedly adopt such activities and integrate them into their normal practices.

GNA