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Implementation partners
Development and delivery partners
A core group of implementation and planning partners has been established as part of complimentary activities already underway. In addition, a final set of implementation partners is still to be finalised eventual partners may include:
Programme management, design and training advisers
- Martin Belcher - Senior Programme Manager (ICT training), INASP (UK).
- Sara Gwynn - Programme Manager (ICT training), INASP (UK).
Content specialists
- Duncan Greaves - Executive Officer: Capacity Development Programs, TENET (South Africa).
- Gerhard Venter - Senior researcher, AfriConnect Ltd (UK, Zambia, Tanzania and Ghana).
- TBC - Flemish technical specialist.
- Others TBC
Institutional partners
Selection of institutions and countries for participation in training activities
Selection of participating countries
The universities that will participate in the initial phase of the workshops and training activities in this programme will be drawn from the following group of countries during 2005-7:
- Bolivia
- Congo
- Cote d'Ivoire
- Ethiopia
- Ghana
- Kenya
- Malawi
- Rwanda
- Senegal
- South Africa
- Tanzania
- Uganda
- Zambia
- Zimbabwe
The leading universities within each country will be invited to participate within the proposed activities. The final participating institutions within each country will be identified by the local partners within each country, after national level consultation with programme partners and funders.
The group of countries above represents those countries in which large-scale electronic information resource use is current, in which network congestion is a key issue and bandwidth optimisation is urgently required and from which requests for assistance and support in this area has already been forwarded to INASP. Further details on each of these areas are supplied below.
- Current large-scale electronic information use: all of these countries either participate within the PERI programme or similar preferential access initiatives (these kinds of initiatives provide preferential access to large collections of electronic information resources (journals, databases, etc.) to researchers, educationalists and students within educational and research institutions, often under national level license initiatives) or the countries or institutions within them, are subscribing to large numbers of electronic information resources independently. Many of these electronic resources subscription initiatives' costs are part funded by donor and/or local level funding. As such, there is a real need to maximise the efficiency of use of the information resources, in terms of financial return for investment.
- Network congestion challenges and optimisation needs: many institutions within all of these countries are already making extensive use of networked information resources (both formal electronic library type resources and more informal ones like the general Internet) and network communication tools and they generally operate in a low, congested bandwidth environment. This means that many institutions face the inevitable bandwidth problems that this programme is designed to help address. Addressing these problems is essential to maximise the use of networked resources for more effective educational and research activities.
- Requests for assistance to INASP: since the publication of the INASP bandwidth optimisation report mentioned previously and the discussion of training support in these areas, many requests for support and assistance have been received from within these countries. Most often these requests have come through the INASP network of PERI programme country coordinators and the library consortia that they participate in. But in addition a great deal of interest and numerous requests have been expressed to INASP after various meetings where these issues have been discussed. This includes formal and informal requests for training and support following events such as:
- Conference of Rectors, Vice-Chancellors & Presidents of African Universities (COREVIP), March 2003, Mauritius
- Innovation in Higher Education conference, September 2003 in Accra, Ghana
- ICTs and the library; experiences, opportunities and challenges for Libraries in Africa, July 2004, Johannesburg, South Africa
- PERI Mid-term review, November 2004, Oxford, UK
- It should be noted that the group of countries and institutions is quite flexible and the list above should not be considered final or exclusive, but rather should be considered an initial list, to which more can be added. The initial countries and institutions to participate within the programme will be one of the earlier priorities for the planning phase of the programme.
Selection of participating institutions
The selection of universities to participate in the initial phase of training and associated events outlined here, will be based on those criteria outlined above and as detailed below:
- Institutions will be actively engaged in research and educational activities
- Institutions will be of medium to large size
- Institutions will be active users of networked based information resources
- Institutions will have bandwidth congestion concerns and challenges
- Institutions will be selected in consultation with appropriate national and/or regional bodies
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