African Virtual Open Initiatives and Resources

Topic Explorer

People

ID: 87736

Added: 2005-09-16 10:34

Modified: 2008-02-25 13:29

Refreshed: 2010-02-07 22:25

Click here to get the URL for the RSS format file

African Virtual Open Initiatives and Resources (AVOIR)

Credit: Derek Keats: The AVOIR development team together with the Minister of Science and Technology, Mr. Mosibudi Mangena (front centre), and UWC Rector, Prof Brian O'Connell (front right), and Prof Derek Keats (front left). Back: Prince Mbekwa (UWC), Sakhile Mkhwanazi (UWC), Paul Scott (UWC), Jonathan Abrahams (UWC), Jeremy O’Connor (UWC). 2nd row from back: Tohir Solomons (UWC), Wesley Nitsckie (UWC), Melisse Benn (UWC), James Scoble (UWC), Candice Adrian (UWC), Marisca Smith (UWC), Megan Watson (UWC). 3rd row from back: Luis Domingos (UEM), Modou Fall (Cheik Anta Diop), John Abakpa(Jos), Samuel Otim (Makerere), Emmanuel Okewu (Jos). 2nd row from front: David Wafula (JKUAT), Elijah Omwenga (U. Niarobi), Frank Tilugulilwa (UDSM), Ngoni Murimba (Catholic Univ Mozambique), Joseph Myalla (UDSM), Jennifer Abegya (Jos).

Project Leader: Derek Keats

IDRC’s Project Partners:

University of the Western Cape, South Africa
University of Jos, Nigeria
Universite Cheikh Anta Diop de Dakar, Senegal
Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology, Kenya
University of Nairobi, Kenya
Makerere University, Uganda
University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania
Catholic University of Mozambique, Mozambique
University of Eduardo Modlane, Mozambique
Department of Science and Technology, South Africa
Microsoft

Start Date: 2004/10/01

Project Details

WSIS Action Lines: 3, 4, 8

“By bringing together the knowledge and skills scattered among many institutions, AVOIR is building capacity for creating world-class software in Africa. It is this synergy that is the strength of AVOIR; collaboration is the vehicle with which to build a growing pool of software engineering talent to contribute to development. We produce excellent software in the process of this capacity building, which is of course a useful output.”

Professor Derek Keats
Executive Director, Information & Communication Services
Universitity of the Western Cape, Belleville, South Africa

The project

AVOIR is an ambitious effort to bring together software developers, educational specialists and others in Africa to build a knowledge network capable of designing, developing, and supporting Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) that can help address African development issues and create African business opportunities. AVOIR is initially focusing on software for education, but over time will develop expertise and best practices in FOSS development and deployment that will be applicable in many sectors. Nine African universities are currently participating in AVOIR.

The Development Goals
By creating a body of FOSS best practices and a community of FOSS developers, AVOIR will lead to the development of collaborative, Internet-based applications for education, health care and government services. These may in turn lead to business opportunities both for universities and African technology services companies. At the same time, a research project will quantify and analyze AVOIR’s growth and development to help others create similar self-sustaining networks of innovation in developing regions.

The Context
Proprietary software can be prohibitively expensive for African universities to buy and maintain, and most lack the internal resources to build their own custom applications. AVOIR harnesses a considerable pool of FOSS expertise both within Africa and beyond, enabling all participating institutions to contribute to projects that combine expertise and experience to produce African solutions developed by and for Africans. At the same time, AVOIR is an opportunity to explore the feasibility of creating self-sustaining knowledge networks for development, guided by three core principles. First, the networks should grow through their own processes (for example, by creating opportunities for student projects). Second, each participating institution should be fully capable of bringing other institutions into the network (for example, by providing training and support). Finally, the network should gradually become economically sustainable, although initially it will require research funding.

The Impact

The first impact of AVOIR is a second-generation FOSS online learning system that will give universities in Africa and other developing regions a powerful tool for harnessing the educational potential of the Internet. This is a comprehensive system built on a modularplatform that makes it easy to add additional modules. AVOIR’s longer-term impact will be even more critical. It will expose African software developers to best practices and the latest software development techniques from commercial software engineering,helping them acquire leading edge skills and expertise. University students, including those in short-term training programmes, will get hands-on experience with industry standard practices, as well as learning from the source code created through AVOIR.Africa’s FOSS talent pool will grow and deepen, and will be able to play a larger role in leveraging ICTs for African development. And the research component of the project will help guide the development of similar networks of researchers and content creators focused on development challenges.

Outputs

All publications and materials related to this project will be listed here as they become available.

Key Words*

/RESEARCH NETWORKS/ /SOFTWARE ENGINEERING/ /COMPUTER PROGRAMS/ /COMPUTER ASSISTED INSTRUCTION/ /DISTANCE STUDY/ /UNIVERSITIES/ /HIGHER EDUCATION

* All terms are drawn from the OECD Macrothesaurus 1998.

Document(s)

AVOIR Outputs 2008-03-17
Open file

Web site(s)

AVOIR Website
Read more...