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Enhancing Research Knowledge Transfer for Africa's Development

posted on Friday, December 28, 2007 03:44 PM

"Effective access to, use, validation and communication of information are key drivers of democracy, good governance and poverty reduction."- (International Network for Availability of Scientific Publications (INASP) Vision


INTRODUCTION (DEFINING THE PROBLEM):

There is an increased recognition of the vital role that information and knowledge can play in development - and of the potential of new information and communication technologies (ICTs) within this.

The internet & the World Wide Web have, in a few short years, have become some of the world’s premier intellectual resources, hosting billions of pages of information and provide unparalleled communication and collaboration opportunities to online academics. In terms of information access, With its enormous resources and collaborative capacities, the Internet poses a historically unique chance for African scholars & universities to gain a more equal footing with their sister institutions in the more developed countries.

Given that more and more academic resources are moving to the Internet – and in some cases being made available only on the Internet – it is imperative that African Scholars and Academics in Universities, Hospitals and Schools become connected soon if they are not to be rendered irrelevant in the modern academic world. Yet many African Universities are years, perhaps decades, away from reliable and robust full Internet connectivity.
The global trend towards electronic dissemination of scholarship presents both promises and difficulties for scholars in Africa.In addition there are many other infrastructural impediments to internet connectivity:

§ Regulatory restrictions of communication
technologies,
§ Equipment failures,
§ Unreliable telecommunications technologies,
§ Lack of foreign exchange with which to pay for the
expensive bandwidth needed for internet connection.


*THE PROPOSED PROJECT SOLUTION:

Harnessing on the innovative open source, off-line storage and information delivery technologies, the *R4D Digital Research Publications Library Appliance Project will address these issues by developing and delivering an information delivery system in the form of -a 750 gig , external USB connected 'plug-and-play' server appliance,moving a large assortment of Research Publications onto the subscriber's local area network (LAN) so that the documents can be made available to everyone within the institution freely and instantly.

In essence,this project is an open-source collaborative effort to garner and deliver a massive collection of digital Research Publications and academic information resources to Africa's information poor. It will provide instant access to an entire range of Academic Research resources,Web pages, audio, video, and multimedia software from within the institution's local area network (LAN) and requires no internet connectivity. It will also provide subscribed institutions with a platform from which they can share their own digital content with scholars around the world.

Unique Solution Proposition (USP)

Although there are dozens of groups involved in resource creation, access,& management for developing countries, offering programs providing institutions in developing countries with free, subsidised or discounted access to an increasingly array of core scholarly material-These efforts are significantly hampered by a lack of the Internet bandwidth at the target institutions. The Clients/would-be subscribers are invited to ‘Come and get it’ over the Internet. Yet the ‘Come and get it’ part is particularly onerous for their clients because it presupposes a great deal of (expensive) bandwidth.

With the R4D Digital RP Library Project, we are saying,"If you can't come to the Web, we'll bring the Web to you!"

A recent report by the Partnership for Higher Education in Africa (2006) has shown that an African University pays, on average nearly 40 times what an American or European University pays for the same amount of bandwidth.

Given the pressing needs for improvements throughout most schools and health services in much of Africa, it is unlikely that they will be able to pay for increasingly expensive bandwidth necessary for adequate internet access.

This 'plug and play' library will provide an information delivery system that is economically and technologically appropriate for developing nations.
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Interested in the Project's development Process or Collaborative Partnership?Plese feel free to drop me a line.

*R4D -(Research for Development)

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