Capacity building

In order to efficiently serve their user communities, national and regional research and education networks need to have adequate capacities and expertise. AfricaConnect3 focuses on expertise and capacity building to ensure national and regional education networks can efficiently serve their user communities.

At regional level, the partners strengthen their own governance and systems following international best practices, and implement their financial sustainability plans. RRENs increasingly focus on the provision of advanced e-services and applications as being key to their sustainability – as their members see the value of such services and are prepared to pay for them.

The partners will also provide support to their member NRENs. This support enables them to build up their capacity as service-oriented non-profit entities, promote the exchange of best practices, and strengthen coordination between NRENs in Africa.

Training initiatives

Technical skills are reinforced through training, workshops, staff exchanges between African NRENs and mentorship programmes. The Emerging NREN Programme aims to integrate technical staff from emerging NRENs into the EU and global NREN community, and to create further synergies and connections at different organisational levels.

Another important training initiative is the Africa Training Initiative (ATI). This collaboration of the three African regional RENs promotes a self-sufficient capacity building ecosystem for African professionals by organising training courses aimed at providing a sustainable basis for the roll-out and maintenance of NREN services. Training courses within ATI have included workshops on network engineering, eduroam and Trust & Identity, cybersecurity, Open Science, cloud, service marketing, and also the NREN CEO Academy.