The UbuntuNet Alliance invites expert volunteers to offer their support through Capacity Building for NRENs. As fibre infrastructure rolls out to and within Africa, there’s the increasing need for human capacities to design, roll out, operate the infrastructures and indeed to deal with the multiple challenges of running NRENs in developing economies.

More information will be published to the Alliance’s website soon.

EASSy, went on live on July 16, 2010, is the third cable to land on the East African coast after SEACOM and TEAMS. The cable is owned by 16 commercial telecom entities with 92 per cent owned by African operators and 8 per cent by international operators (the West Indian Ocean Cable Company – WIOCC – is the single largest investor).

The arrival of EASSy is expected to increase the Internet connection competition in the region which will eventually result in the reduction of usage rates and it will bring network redundancy in the region, assuring a much higher level of access availability for users. The cable serves 9 countries and it has the capability to deliver 1.4Tbs capacity, making it the largest submarine cable system serving the continent.

While there are several maps showing the undersea fibre cables laid around the coast of Africa (the map of Steve Song has been internationally recognised), there is little data on the coverage of fibre in the hinterlands.

The first attempt to give a complete picture of Intra-Africa’s terrestrial internet coverage comes from the UbuntuNet Alliance, who has recently published a map tracking the existing and upcoming fibre in the hinterlands of the African continent including the fibre for telecommunications, general purpose national backbones and utility companies.

The initiative has been enabled by funding from IDRC within the framework of CORENA, while NRENs have supported the initiative by providing data on existing and upcoming fibre within the different countries.

The intra-Africa fibre map has been published on the UbuntuNet Alliance website to facilitate public input and comment to ensure that the planned quarterly updates of the map do not only improve accuracy but are also responsive to the needs of stakeholders.

eI-Africa is very pleased to welcome a new sponsor of the “2010 Euro-Africa e-Infrastructures Conference”: eLearning Africa is the largest international conference on ICT for development, education and training on the African Continent.

The 6th conference will take place from May 25–27, 2011 in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania,. Every year the conference grows, drawing in an increasing number of participants from Africa (80%) and beyond. Starting with 832 participants in Addis Ababa in 2006, the number increased to 1778 in Lusaka, Zambia. eLearning Africa is the key networking event for educational decision-makers and practitioners in governments, public and private education and corporate HRD and for all those who are passionate about the opportunities offered by new technology for bringing genuine social progress to Africa through education.

The 2010 Euro-Africa e-Infrastructures Conference at a glance.

The European Commission has just published (July 20, 2010) 51 new Calls for Proposal covering the four main FP7 Specific Programmes: Cooperation, Capacities, Ideas and People. The full texts of the Calls are published to the FP7 section of the Cordis website.

Among them, the 9th call for proposals has been detailed in the Research Infrastructures Work Programme 2011 and has been published under the e-Infrastructures topic of the FP7 “Capacities” Specific Programme (FP7-INFRASTRUCTURES-2011-2).

With an indicative budget of EUR 95 million, the ninth call aims at supporting the existing research infrastructures, the construction of new infrastructures as well as the policy development and programme implications. The topics of the call include: 1/. INFRA-2011-1.2.1: e-Science environments; 2/.INFRA-2011-1.2.2: Data infrastructures for e-Science; 3/. INFRA-2011-2.3.1: Second implementation phase of the European High Performance Computing (HPC) service PRACE; 4/. INFRA-2011-3.4: Coordination actions, conferences and studies supporting policy development, including international cooperation, for e- Infrastructures; 4/. INFRA-2011-3.5: Trans-national cooperation among NCPs.

The deadline for the submission of proposal is on November 23, 2010.