Presented at TNC International Session, Reykjavik, Thursday 24 th May 2012 Facilitating advanced applications and collaboration : UbuntuNet Alliance Margaret E Ngwira UbuntuNet Alliance (also CHAIN Consortium Partner)

Presented at TNC International Session, Reykjavik, Thursday 24 th May What is UbuntuNet Alliance? 2.AfricaConnect project 3.EU FP7 project participation: CHAIN and research opportunities Contents

Presented at TNC International Session, Reykjavik, Thursday 24 th May What is UbuntuNet Alliance ? The Regional REN for Eastern and Southern Africa, founded in 2006 Currently 13 members and others in communication Aims to interconnect all member NRENs, to connect them to other regional RENs and to provide value added services Secretariat in Lilongwe, Malawi and CEO based in Kampala Working closely with DANTE on implementation of AfricaConnect Collaborating with CLARA Participating in EU FP7 projects since 2007: GLOBAL, ERINA4Africa, CHAIN, CHAIN-REDS

Presented at TNC International Session, Reykjavik, Thursday 24 th May What is UbuntuNet Alliance? The RREN for Eastern and Southern Africa: – DRC EthERNet - Ethiopia KENET – Kenya MAREN – Malawi MoRENet – Mozambique RENU – Uganda RwEdNet – Rwanda SomaliREN – Somalia SudREN – Sudan (now without South Sudan) TENET – South Africa TERNET – Tanzania Xnet – Namibia ZAMREN – Zambia

Presented at TNC International Session, Reykjavik, Thursday 24 th May What is UbuntuNet Alliance? NREN Status Some NRENs have national infrastructure often through the incumbent telecomm provider A growing number purchase international capacity which is routed through the UbuntuNet London router into GÉANT and the global REN network An NREN compliance table is on the UbuntuNet Website

Presented at TNC International Session, Reykjavik, Thursday 24 th May What is UbuntuNet Alliance? Africa-EU Strategic Partnership initiative open to universities in Africa The African Higher Education system is undergoing a tremendous transformation process. This includes a number of national, regional and continental initiatives which are the Nyerere programme, the African higher Education Harmonisation and Quality Assurance programme, the Pan- African University and many others. One initiative which links institutional, national, regional, continental and international endeavours is the African Higher Education Harmonisation and Tuning Project (Tuning Africa), which is part of the Africa-EU Strategic Partnership. This uses an internationally established methodology to enhance degree comparability, graduate mobility and employability. Read more...Read more... Knowledge without borders: Europe research networks in 2020 Today’s research is very different from that of 20 years ago. Location is becoming ever more irrelevant as scientists form collaborations and work on research across different labs, institutions and countries. Scientific collaborations today span Europe, Asia, North America and beyond are as likely to contact each other via as face-to-face. And from their office they can access instruments on the other side of the world, simply by opening their laptops. In Europe GÉANT is at the heart of this connectivity. Spanning 40 countries, connecting 40 million researchers and students at over 8,000 institutions, giving them the ability to work together and share data across borders. Read more...Read more... Sparkling community around open-source NOC tools An open-source NOC Tool Workshop was for the first time held in conjunction with the 4th meeting of TERENA's Task Force on Network Operation Centres (TF-NOC) on the October 2011 in Brussels, hosted by Belnet, the Belgian National Research Networking organisation. The workshop attracted more than 35 participants. There, Belnet presented their developments in the Nagios monitoring tool plug-in, which gained significant interest among the workshop participants and led to an agreement to organise a Nagios plugfest session during the next TF-NOC meeting. Other NRENs, regional networks and campus NOCs. Read more... Read more... 1.Communication Strategy Document 2.Website E-Newsletter 4. Annual Reports

Presented at TNC International Session, Reykjavik, Thursday 24 th May 2012 bps Internet 2 Gbps GÉANT UbuntuNet, London UbuntuNet, Johannesburg TENET/ SANReN KENET Swaziland Lesotho Namibia Botswan a MoRENet 10Gbps TERNET 155Mbps 20Gbps 1. What is UbuntuNet Alliance? Current Operations

Presented at TNC International Session, Reykjavik, Thursday 24 th May What is UbuntuNet Alliance? WACREN: the West African RREN West and Central African Research and Education Network Formally registered in 2010, having been incubated by AAU REN Unit Management Board elected in March 2011, president Professor Tiemoman Kone Signed MOU with SnREN, Senegal to host NOC Participating Universities : Benin, Burkina faso, Cameroon, Cote D’Ivoire, Gabon, Ghana, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Togo No Operational NRENs yet Working with RENATER

Presented at TNC International Session, Reykjavik, Thursday 24 th May AfricaConnect project

Presented at TNC International Session, Reykjavik, Thursday 24 th May 2012 Boost for African research as European Commission injects €14.75M into regional research and education connectivity. The project will be strongly collaborative, so whilst DANTE will coordinate AfricaConnect, they are partnered by DANTE’s regional counterpart organisations in Africa – UbuntuNet Alliance covering Eastern and Southern Africa WACREN covering Western and Central Africa –Association of African Universities; Existing National Research and Education Networks (NRENs) in Africa Several European NRENs 2. AfricaConnect project

Presented at TNC International Session, Reykjavik, Thursday 24 th May AfricaConnect project AfricaConnect supports data-intensive, time-critical applications between collaborating partners, but can equally be used to provide fast access to conventional web-based resources from all over the Southern and Eastern African region and beyond. Use of the network for collaborative applications is growing rapidly. AfricaConnect provides a gateway for global collaboration, enabling users at research centres and universities across the region to participate in joint projects with their peers in Europe and other parts of the world.

Presented at TNC International Session, Reykjavik, Thursday 24 th May AfricaConnect project DANTE (Cathrin Stöver) is working with UbuntuNet Alliance (Tusu, Andrew Alston and Joe Kimaili) on the design and implementation of the network UbuntuNet Alliance working with its member NRENs in the implementation Some members are ready to make available their 20% contribution and others are still identifying the funding sources. It is envisaged that when the network is in place it will be a great vehicle for strengthening regional collaborative research and education and will also enable advanced research between the African region, Europe and the wider global REN community

Presented at TNC International Session, Reykjavik, Thursday 24 th May EU FP7 project participation 1. GLOBAL : Global Linkages over broadband links Enabled collaboration among researchers in Europe and around the globe to socialise and connect with each other by conferencing EU FP7 Coordination and Support actions, Research Infrastructure ERINA4Africa projects to provide African and EU policy makers with a detailed analysis of exploitable scenarios of existing and potential e-Infrastructures in Africa illustrating the return on infrastructure investments CHAIN The CHAIN project aims to coordinate and leverage recent efforts with a vision of a harmonised and optimised interaction model for e-Infrastructure and specifically Grid interfaces between Europe and the rest of the world. The projects aims to provide African and EU policy makers with a detailed analysis of exploitable scenarios of existing and potential e-Infrastructures in Africa illustrating the return on

Presented at TNC International Session, Reykjavik, Thursday 24 th May EU FP7 project participation : CHAIN Project

The e-Infrastructures promote the usage of network connectivity and stimulate scientific and technical development of countries contribute to fight the digital divide and brain drain. e- Infrastructures support wide geographically distributed communities enhance international collaboration of scientists promote collaboration in other fields. Grids and networks allow the access of many researchers to scientific resources (laboratories and data) Disparity can be reduced and larger participation and contributions to high quality research. 3. EU FP7 project participation : CHAIN Project

Presented at TNC International Session, Reykjavik, Thursday 24 th May EU FP7 project participation: CHAIN and research opportunities UbuntuNetConnect 2011 CHAIN pre Conference Workshop on Research Applications and E-Infrastructure and CHAIN PMB, Nairobi, November 2011

Presented at TNC International Session, Reykjavik, Thursday 24 th May EU FP7 project participation : CHAIN and research opportunities UbuntuNet Alliance, with Bruce Becker of SAGrid as part of the team is working to raise awareness of Grid computing by Assisting in the establishment or facilitation National Grid Initiatives in the region, often in conjunction with the NRENs Collaborating with relevant initiatives wherever possible Assisting in the identification of Applications and the development of Virtual Research Communities

Presented at TNC International Session, Reykjavik, Thursday 24 th May 2012 Conclusion There are reasons for optimism on the African Continent in the field of research and education networking: The development of the regional networks and related interconnections The impact of the services that will run over the network, facilitating movement of research communities and the expansion of lifelong learning opportunities The opportunities thus afforded for research collaboration at a high level The capacity building of the member NRENs and the cascading effect it will have

Presented at TNC International Session, Reykjavik, Thursday 24 th May 2012