Today, the Internet Society issued a news release announcing that it is giving 120,000 USD to the West and Central African Research and Education Networks (WACREN) to support African Research and Education Networks’ (NREN) work in increasing their skills and improving their Internet infrastructure. WACREN and the Internet Society will be working with Ubuntunet and Arab States Research and Education Network (ASREN) to implement this project. This is the largest contribution that the Internet Society is making to African NRENs after its donation of networking equipment worth more than 170,000 USD to WACREN and ASREN back in 2013
Building on this partnership, the Internet Society looks forward to strengthen its collaboration with Africa’s NRENs and their regional networks. In particular, it aims at helping expand the existing training programs using e-learning tools to provide training to more African Research and Education Networks. It will also work to increase the participation of Africans in Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) activities and supporting the participation of African universities in Internet development conferences.
The Internet Society is happy to renew its support to African Research and Education Networks, as it believes it is critical to strengthen the Internet infrastructure and skills of Africans, which will highly contribute in transforming education and research in Africa and eventually build a strong foundation for the development of the Internet economy, entrepreneurship and innovation that the continent is striving to achieve. Today, it is clear that Africa’s development depends on how well it can provide quality education to its entire people. Moreover, it is high time that Africa becomes an innovative continent by promoting research at the highest level. This cannot be achieved without the use of tools such as ICT’s in general and Internet in particular that can help overcome some of the major barriers that have limited the growth of education and research on the continent.
We are looking forward to a long and successful partnership to help bring quality education to all Africans!