SENEGAL: Anti-brain drain computing grid installed

Cheikh Anta Diop University (UCAD) in Dakar is the first university in sub-Saharan Africa to benefit from installation of a computing grid under the Reversing Brain Drain into Brain Gain for Africa project jointly run by Unesco, Hewlett-Packard and the CNRS, France's national scientific research centre. The new infrastructure will make it easier for researchers at the university to collaborate with colleagues abroad, and give them access to considerable information technology resources (see University World News, 22 June 2008).

Grid computing is a hardware and software infrastructure that clusters and integrates computer networks, databases and scientific instruments from multiple sources to form a virtual environment in which users can work collaboratively. The project will eventually provide the technology to five universities in five African countries - Algeria, Ghana, Nigeria and Zambia as well as Senegal.

The grid node at UCAD was set up by the CNRS Institut des grilles (Grid Computing Institute), and is the first component in sub-Saharan Africa of the grid infrastructure established in 2004 under the European Union's Enabling Grids for E-sciencE (EGEE).

Unesco and the CNRS said the successful installation was the result of cooperation between UCAD, the CNRS for its support and expertise, the foundation Partager le savoir for help in defining issues relating to grids in Africa, the French embassy in Senegal for financing the Institut des grilles mission to Dakar, and the Unesco-Hewlett-Packard project which provided advanced IT equipment, funding and training to set up, manage and use grid technology.

The project follows successful implementation of a similar Unesco-Hewlett-Packard venture in south-east Europe launched in 2003, which helped create websites, data bases and new research projects in several universities, said the organisations. Four universities have become totally autonomous in the use of grid technology, and the project continues in three others, they added.
For more information visit
www.allafrica.com
www.unesco.org
www.cnrs.fr