AFRICAN TERTIARY INSTITUTIONS CONNECTIVITY SURVEY (ATICS) 2006 REPORT Karanja Gakio, Cyberplex Africa, Botswana i Acknowledgements This survey was commissioned by the International Development Research Centre of Canada (IDRC), building upon the initial ATICS 2004 study that was funded by the World Bank. The study was carried out by Karanja Gakio, at Cyberplex Africa, Gaborone, Botswana. He can be contacted at:
[email protected] The authors would like to thank the following people for their valuable insights, suggestions and contributions to this study: Heloise Emdon, IDRC Mike Jensen, IDRC Ann Jeffries, UZ Stephen Song, IDRC ii Executive Summary Connectivity in African Tertiary Institutions The state of Internet connectivity in tertiary institutions in Africa can be summarized by three characteristics – too little, too expensive and poorly managed. The average African university has bandwidth capacity equivalent to a broadband residential connection available in Europe, pays 50 times more for their bandwidth than their educational counterparts in the rest of the world, and fails to monitor, let alone manage, the existing bandwidth, when improving bandwidth management is probably the easiest way for universities to improve the quantity and quality of their bandwidth for educational purposes. As a result, what little bandwidth that is available becomes even less useful for research and education purposes. However, initiatives within the continent point the way to a different future. North Africa is the most advanced of all regions in Africa because universities in these countries have just recently become members of the EU MED Connect project, which links them via high speed undersea fibre networks to the European academic and research network GEANT.