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e-Infrastructures in Sub-Saharan Africa
The supply side of e-Infrastructures include network operators, high-performance computer centres, etc. In the context of this study, an e-Infrastructure is defined as a combination of advanced computing and communication resources and data repositories specific to a well defined research community. The Erina4Africa project analysed the availability of these resources in Africa and will investigate on the potential benefits from using them in an African context Dedicated Research and Education Networks (RENs) Internet has its earliest origins in the academic world in 1970ies. It developed as a global research and education infrastructure connecting universities and their industrial research partners during the 1980-ies. The industrialization has been rapid since the early 1990ies and has formed many new business areas, such as Internet Service Providers, Web hotels, Caching service providers, co-location services, etc. In some areas, the RENs are still leading the development of technical network solutions, services and applications. The dedicated research and education networks are organized hierarchically. Each country has a national research and education network (NREN) connected to the Regional Research and Education Backbone network (RREN), which again is connected to similar regional backbones on other continents, such as GEANT in Europe, Internet2 and CANARIE in North America, RedCLARA in Latin America, TEIN in Asia, etc. Mostly, the REN communities lease links to build their networks, dark fibre, wavelengths or unmanaged capacity. The capacity in the REN backbones are mostly 10Gbps but 40 and 100 Gbps links are emerging. It is in this high-performance communication environment that the concept of e-infrastructures has developed. Africa is behind in this development due to the lack of terrestrial infrastructure leading to a strong dependence on expensive narrowband satellite links. This is changing rapidly as several submarine cable systems are being deployed on both sides of Africa, as well as regional and national terrestrial backbones, often part of other infrastructure projects, such as the electrification, roads, railways and pipelines of different sorts. While waiting for more dense electrical and optical fibre grids to penetrate the rural areas, the rapidly developing mobile phone networks offer alternatives to the satellite links. The REN communities in Africa are organised in three subregions
The AfricaConnect Initiative, which is the implementation phase following the FEAST feasibility study, has just started. It will support the establishment of the regional backbones facilitating connection of the ready African NRENs to the global resources. It will also support capacity building in the not yet ready communities and establish a few demonstrators illustrating the value of the investment. There are other initiatives supporting the establishment of NRENs. Development of ICT Infrastructure in Burkina Faso Since 2000 Sida/SAREC has supported the University of Ouagadougou (UO), the Polytechnic University of Bobo Diolasso (UPB) and the National Science and Technology Research Centre (CNRST) in Burkina Faso. The Sida assistance initially consisted of cooperation in research projects and support to students post graduate studies in Sweden and Burkina Faso. In 2002 Sida/SAREC decided to assist the three academic institutions to improve their Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) infrastructure which are regarded as essential tools for the scientific and academic work. The objective of the first phase of the project was to identify ICT needs and priorities in the three partner institutions. The objectives of the subsequent phase was to provide the required ICT infrastructure, develop capacity to maintain, develop and use the infrastructure and provide a library information system for the three partner institutions. The PanAfrican e-Network project This PanAfrican e-Network project is a cooperation between the Government of India and the African Union Commission and is thus an example of south-south cooperation The cooperation includes bilateral donations of equipment to several African countries and includes cooperation in all the key application areas discussed in this study, education, healthcare and governance. The network infrastructure is based on satellite links paid in the receiving end and could eventually be replaced by the emerging African terrestrial communication infrastructure. Within the program a number of PARAM supercomputers have been donated that will shortly be made available via the emerging African research and education network. Computing resources dedicated to research and education Two of the main computing technologies involved in e-Infrastructures are Grid and Cloud computing. Grid-computing is a technology that supports the federation between organizations of different levels by introducing a software layer (middleware) facilitating authorization and access control making it possible to grant users controlled access to each others' computer systems. Based on this concept, the “Enabling Grids for E-sciencE”-project (EGEE) has developed a global grid infrastructure service, which is available to scientists 24 hours-a-day via the dedicated global research and education network. Advanced computing centres dedicated to research and education in Africa include:
The facility is a Linux based PARAM Supercomputer Cluster.
Commercial computing services based on Cloud Computing Cloud-computing is a new technology which is considered as a business evolution of grid-computing. The essential elements of cloud computing include advanced virtualization and grid computing operations, it evolves from grid computing and provides on-demand resource provisioning: “A cloud is simply a grid used in a more abstract context” … “a pool of virtualized and scalable resources, exploited in pay-per-use utility model ”. The basic architectural requirements for grids and cloud are the same: middleware, hardware, storage or network resources. In the cloud computing paradigm these resources are offered as part of the cloud service or by IT companies. While Grid computing developed in the research world thanks to easy federation of resources collaboration among institutes and researchers (physics, bioinformatics, geology, chemistry and many others), Cloud computing is a commercial service, offered by a growing number of IT companies (for example AmazonEC2, IBM, Microsoft, NComputing and many others) and focuses on resources provision according to “pay-as-you-go” model. Ncomputing Inc provides virtual desktops in cloud infrastructures to governments and non-government organizations in several African countries. The applications include education, training, health care and e-governance. Usage of e-Infrastructures The use of e-Infrastructures offers opportunities to increase cooperation between scientists by exploiting broadband networks offering a high quality of service, such as the global dedicated research and education networks (RENs), supercomputers interconnected by grid technology, and scientific data management systems. The use of e-infrastructures revolutionizes research by facilitating the creation of global virtual research communities (GVRCs ), the role of which are becoming more and more fundamental for research bodies at a national and international level. An increasing number of researchers understand the extent to which e-Infrastructures could affect the processes and results involved in experiments and new discoveries in the various research areas such as physics, bioinformatics, biology, astronomy, geology, chemistry, and many others . The concept of e-Infrastructures is a powerful enabler of global research cooperation. They are considered to be key enablers of sustainable development and prevent “brain drain”. The use of e-Infrastructures could help African research and higher education institutions promote the development of ICT in sectors as public administration, education or health aiming at speeding up the process of developing advanced economies contributing to the social and economical development. The adoption of the “Grid paradigm” and the effective usage of e-Infrastructures require comprehensive education and training to help scientists make use of them. There are several projects with the objective to stimulate and foster the use of e-Science and Grids with participation from research groups on all continents, also from Africa. One of these projects is EPIKH, which has the primary goal to reinforce the impact of e-Infrastructures in scientific research by defining and delivering stimulating programmes of educational events, including Grid Schools and High Performance Computing courses. Another goal of EPIKH is to broaden the engagement in e-Science activities and collaborations, geographically and across disciplines. These goals translate into specific actions, such as disseminating knowledge about the “Grid Paradigm” to potential users, both system administrators and application developers through an extensive training programme, easing the access of the trained people to the e-Infrastructures existing in the areas of action of the project and fostering the establishment of scientific collaborations among the countries/continents involved in the project.
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Copyright © 2009 - Exploiting Research INfrastructures potentiAl for boosting Research and Innovation in Africa The Erina4Africa project (246663) is co-funded by the European Commission, DG INFSO under the Research Infrastructures Capacities Programme.
