Students and staff of the Research and Education Network of Uganda (RENU) member institutions can now access their institutions’ websites and e-learning portals without...
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.
- ZAMREN installed Moodle offering free hosting for 22 member institutions in Zambia.
- 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. It also introduced zero-rated mobile access for students and staff of RENU member institutions.
- WACREN offered its members a licensed use on its Zoom service until the end of 2020 to support their need for online collaboration tools.
- 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.
- In Sierra Leone, SLREN is helping HLIs to leverage existing commercial internet access to online e-resources websites and provide zero rating of universities URLs.
Words: Effah Amponsah Amid this COVID season, as National Research and Education Networks (NRENs) across the globe are striding and striving to support education...
Words: Effah Amponsah The West and Central African Research and Education Network (WACREN) is offering its members a licensed use on its Zoom service until the end of...
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...