Words: Effah Amponsah Amid this COVID season, as National Research and Education Networks (NRENs) across the globe are striding and striving to support education...
COVID19 in focus

The African RRENs’ response to COVID19 in a nutshell:
- The Ministry of Education in Morocco launched an e-learning portal, Morocco eLPortal, hosted by the MARWAN network
- ARN is interested in deploying locally a branch of openUp2U in Algeria
- EUN has coordinated with IT vendors to support university services in Egypt
- CCK has set up a Jitsi-based videoconferencing tool for online classes in Tunisian universities as well as a VPN-SSL service for easy access to scientific resources for the academic community
- Ongoing discussions with telecoms operators about zero ratings for educational websites
- Ongoing discussions and technical tests for UA to host BigBlueButton to support NRENs and universities interested in online teaching and e-learning
- UA jointly hosted a VC meeting with the World Bank, “NRENs as Life-Savers for University during COVID-19”, on best responses, challenges and opportunities during the pandemic
- In Kenya, KENET is offering a discounted data bundle to university students
- In Mozambique, MoRENet has requested a capacity upgrade to access UbuntuNet network
- The Uganda Christian University and the Catholic University of Malawi have successfully migrated to e-learning, online exams and communications with students
- RENU has expressed interest in deploying locally an openUp2U branch in Uganda
- In Ghana, GARNET is conducting tests to support e-learning via a pilot eduID Ghana federation now involving providers from 12 institutions
- WACREN is organising online training activities, such as online capacity building workshops in substitution to the cancelled WACREN 2020 conference and the LIBSENSE online workshop on open scholarly communication infrastructure
- WACREN has been supporting the COVID-19 Smart Development Hack by gathering implementation proposals on an Open Science platform in response to the pandemic
Words: Hastings Ndebvu The Zambia Research and Education Network (ZAMREN) has assisted at least 22 member institutions install the virtual teaching and learning...
Words: Effah Amponsah Eko-Konnect has taken a major step to support higher education institutions in the current Covid-19 pandemic by hosting a series of webinars to...
Words: Hastings Ndebvu As one way of sustaining teaching and learning through various online platforms during the COVID-19 pandemic, the Kenya Education Network (KENET)...
Words: Yasmeen Al-Kouz With the advent of the present Covid-19 pandemic, the Egyptian universities have resorted to e-learning platforms and online classes. In an effort...
Words: Yasmeen Al-Kouz Over 1.5 billion children and youth around the world have been affected by school closures due to the COVID-19 outbreak. To ensure the continuity...
Words: Hastings Ndebvu In an effort to support the improvement of research and education standards across the African continent, UbuntuNet Alliance in partnership with...
Words: Hastings Ndebvu On May 27 2020, the UbuntuNet Alliance (UA), in partnership with Makere University, organized a webinar on Instructional Design in E...
Words: Yasmeen Al-Kouz The COVID-19 pandemic has led to the temporary closure of educational institutions around the world in an attempt to contain the spread of the...
6 April 2020 Amidst the unprecedented COVID-19 pandemic, many academic and research communities have resolved to work remotely for health and safety reasons. This...