NREN Twinning between African and European NRENs
Objectives of the TWINNING ACTIVITY
The objective of the twinning exercise between Africa and Europe is to build relationships and speed up the development of NRENs in Africa. Part of the plan is to build long term contacts between staff in the African NRENs with staff in the European NRENs.
- Multilateral arrangements, more than one organisation links up together, i.e. many-to-many
- Loose arrangements, but documented, need to share experiences, both in Europe and Africa
- Build up skill sets between Africa and Europe; both sides have lots to learn
- Document areas of expertise that are of relevance and publicise them
- Build a database of expertise on both sides
- Expand TERENA compendium to include specialist expertise available for developing NRENs
Capacity Building could be provided in different areas (non exhaustive list):
- Strategic planning
- Political management of the masters above
- Senior management skills in the NREN
- Financial Management
- Personnel management
- Technical strategy
- Operations
- Planning
- Technical development
Expectations of an African NREN
- Establish a technical staff exchange program. African NRENs who are setting up new NOCs would really appreciate their engineers spending two to four weeks at a European NOC to learn how to operate a high-speed and large R&E network. In the same way, engineers from the European NREN could spend 2-4 weeks in Africa helping to establish the NOC operations, design optical fibre networks using dark fibre, and helping us optimize our networks.
- The African NREN would provide accommodation, transport, and tourism to the engineers from European NREN and hopefully, that is also possible with European NREN (cannot afford accommodation costs unless grants are applied for).
- Need to develop project management skills of senior technical staff and that could be done through the exchange program.
- Need to facilitate visits to university ICT centres to learn about structures, procedures, and campus network design and operations. This would not only be open to African NREN staff but also university technical staff.
- Need African technical staff to attend conferences and training workshops, especially in emerging areas of transition to IPv6 and optical fibre network design.
- The African/European NREN exchanges would be windows for collaboration among faculty and researchers in the different member universities.
Twinning Initiative: Expertise Available and Sought
European and African NRENs can place information on the expertise they are able to offer to other NRENs and also the type of expertise sought at La Place. This areas isbeing used as a pilot repository and may be developed in new ways in order to improve its easy of use and effectiveness.
If you wish your NREN to be included in the summary please provide information to be entered in all columns. The initiative is open to all AFRICAN and EUROPEAN NRENs
Please send information to: John DYER.
Workshop on Twinning
The FEAST PROJECT partners held a half-day workshop on:
TUESDAY 27 OCTOBER 2009 between 10:00 CET and 13:00 CET
PROGRAMME
- Michael Nowlan, DANTE
- FEAST Project and Twinning Idea - Gerti Foest, DFN, Germany
- What is DFN's current involvement with African NRENs
- What we think European NRENs can and should offer
- Benefits/outcomes for African and European NRENs
- Presentation slides - Daniel Lete, HEANET, Ireland
- some views - Joao Nuno Ferreira, FCCN, Portugal
- FCCN would like also to state their support for the twinning of African and European NRENs
- Presentation slides - John DYER, TERENA
- roundup and follow up actions
- Sabine Jaume, RENATER, France
- Steve Hogger, JANET(UK), UK
- Solomon Dindi, Chancellor College, Zomba, Malawi
If you would like to participate:
If you wish to find out more about twinning or make a request to participate, please send an email to John DYER.
Page maintained by John Dyer at TERENA
dyer@terena.org
The FEAST Study has been made possible by funding from: