Investigating African e-Infrastructure Applications of the Future
6th-7th October 2010, Lilongwe, Malawi
REGISTRATION NOW OPEN!
The 2nd ERINA4Africa workshop will be held at Kumbali Lodge, LILONGWE, Malawi on the 6th-7th October 2010 with sponsorship from the European Union under the EU FP7 project ERINA4Africa.
The event will provide participants with the opportunity to discover e-Infrastructures and their applications and to network with those interested in application development.
The second (optional) day of this workshop will feature demonstrations and presentations of potential e-Infrastructure applications.
Participation is free of charge but limited to 30 participants. Register Now!
Context
e-Infrastructures enable research environments in which researchers globally collaborate and have shared access to scientific facilities (data, communications, computing and instruments).
The coming of the first fibre cables to East Africa in 2009 presented enhanced opportunities for enhanced harnessing of e-infrastructure in sub Saharan African region in a way that was not possible when VSAT was the main means of connectivity. The AfricaConnect initiative will enhance the development of these e-Infrastructures in the countries where it is implemented and also more broadly through their interconnection to the Global REN community. Once AfricaConnect is fully realised, what will be the major scientific applications that will use the network? The “Exploiting Research Infrastructures potential for boosting research and iNnovation in Africa” (ERINA4Africa) project is investigating these applications.
This workshop presents the opportunity to discuss this question and to outline the high priority applications of the future that urgently need to be developed.
ERINA4Africa Project
Erina4Africa is the European project for all those who are interested in e-Infrastructures, e-Learning, e-Government, e-Health, European-African collaboration. The project aims to provide African and EU policy makers with a detailed analysis of exploitable scenarios of existing (and new) e-Infrastructures in Africa. This will offer the African community the opportunity of rapid development & adoption of Research Infrastructures thanks to best practices and policy lessons from Europe, while the European community will be in a position to demonstrate on-the-field benefits of exploiting Research Infrastructures in key public services. In short, ERINA4Africa aims at providing: a virtual observatory, a foresight Study as well as robust results validated by the community, via a series of virtual conferences and local meetings.
UbuntuNet
UbuntuNet Alliance is the Association of National Research and Education Networks (NRENs) in Africa, established in 2005, with the Secretariat in Malawi. The Chair, appointed by the Association of African Universities, is Professor Zimani Kadzamira and the CEO (Uganda based) is Dr F. F. Tusubira. With a current membership of 12 country NRENs, it works to secure high bandwidth Internet connections to interconnect the NRENs of the region to each other and to the Global academic and research Internet and to build human and research capacity. The Malawi member of UbuntuNet Alliance is MAREN, MAREN CEO is Solomon Dindi.
Further information
For further information on the Workshop, please contact Margaret Nwgira (email: info@ubuntunet.net; phone: +265 1 754 535). To learn more on the Initiative, please visit the website or contact us at info@erina4africa.eu