Abstract

Much has been said about the power of the Internet to deliver educational material and research publications to poorly resourced universities in the South. Yet all this hinges on having fairly good Internet bandwidth. In Africa, Internet bandwidth is exorbitantly expensive and the amount available makes effective use of the Internet difficult. Moreover, existing bandwidth is inefficiently used due to meager capacity to deal with issues like spam, viruses and Internet-based e-mail and chat rooms that are extremely bandwidth intensive. This grant will allow the International Network for the Availability of Scientific Publications (INASP) to help African research and education institutions optimize scarce Internet bandwidth. It will do so by means of a travelling workshop and supporting materials targeting three key groups: senior management, information intermediaries and information technology staff. The workshop materials will be made freely available to whomever wants to use them and a dissemination strategy will ensure that stakeholders are informed of their existence.

Recipient Institution(s)