Research and Education Network of Uganda

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• Research and Education Network of Uganda
• (RENU)

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Outline

• Background
• Membership
• Achievements
• Challenges
• Aspirations

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Background

• VCs and CEOs of Universities and Research
  Organisations met and agreed to setup RENU (Jan
  2006)
• Benefits and synergy of working together
• Open membership
• Appointed a task team
• Facilitate meetings amongst stakeholder
• Engage development partner their support
• REN infrastructure and entity

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Membership

• Uganda Christian University (UCU)
• Mbarara University of Science and Technology
• Kyambogo University
• Gulu University
• Makerere University
• Makerere University Business School

• Uganda Martyrs University
• Joint Clinical Research Centre (JCRC)
• National Agricultural Research Organization (NARO)

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Achievements

• Meetings amongst end-users from various
  institutions to explore ways to collaborate
• Technical workshops
• ICT policy and management
• Bandwidth management and optimisation
• Funding to setup a secretariat
• Setting up a legal entity
• Hosting UbuntuNet Alliance and IEEAF

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Challenges

• Institutional collaboration
• Co-opetition
• Awareness and ownership
• Mindset and fear of change
• Varying levels of institutional ICT literacy
• Competent ICT expertise
• Competition with the private sector
• Part-time secretariat

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Challenges (cont)?

• Sustainability
• Integral part of the process
• Beyond acquisitions, recurrent costs
• Costly information and management systems
• ICT expertise is expensive and highly mobile

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Aspirations

• Increasing research and academic collaboration
  among Uganda Universities
• Sharing academic human resource and expertise
• Common courses that can be delivered over
  e-learning platforms
• Easy portability of students and their records
• Sharing costs for common software and platforms
  as well as ICT expertise

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Aspirations (cont)

• Stronger negotiating positions
• Policy makers and regulators
• ICT suppliers
• Development partners
• Regional and international RENs
• Provide a strong foundation for better
  connectivity as we strive to join an increasingly
  global and knowledge driven society

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Our sponsors

• IDRC
• FRENIA
• UbuntuNet Alliance
• IEEAF

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• Thank you for listening to me