HIGH-SPEED INTERNET ACCESS FOR AFRICAN UNIVERSITIES The Lifeline of International Research Cooperation

Transcription

1 HIGH-SPEED INTERNET ACCESS FOR AFRICAN UNIVERSITIES The Lifeline of International Research Cooperation Calestous Juma Harvard Kennedy School Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA Elisabeth Moyer Department of Geophysical Sciences University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA Presented at the Special Session on Science and Technology Collaboration between Developed and Developing Countries convened by the STS forum on the occasion of the Fourth Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD IV) in Yokohama, Japan May 29, 2008

2 Executive summary African universities could be the continent s gateways into the global knowledge economy loci for local diffusion of new technologies. They are also the most critical nodes in international research cooperation. But this potential remains unrealized because universities and research institutes remain digitally-isolated from the rest of the world. African universities of the size of the University of Tokyo have the Internet capability of a single Japanese household. Put another way, it is like 30,000 people trying to use a single household connection. This is impracticable and as a result most African universities hardly benefit from the abundant scientific and technical knowledge against world. Access to new information is the lifeline of universities and should be given the same priority as other critical infrastructure services in society such as access roads, power and water supply. The little bandwidth that exists costs as much as $15,000 a month. And even when universities pay these exorbitant rates, the services are hardly reliable. The result is an isolated continent whose faculty and students hardly use the latest available knowledge. Moreover, the isolation prevents African universities from entering into effective partnerships with the rest of the world. Internet access is essential for African universities due to their limited budgets. High-speed Internet access can provide a pathway to knowledge content that would otherwise be too expensive: textbooks, course materials, research results and international contacts. Scientific and technical knowledge is doubling nearly every year. As a result, there is considerable pressure to revise textbook and other teaching material. African countries can reduce the costs of revising textbooks by using the Internet to access existing material. Universities such as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) are already putting their course material on the web for free access. There are several other initiatives such as the Project Gutenberg that are scanning and archiving classic works and new textbooks. In addition to providing educational and research opportunities, high speed internet access will also help improve cultural exchanges and improved understanding between Africa and the rest of the world. It is one of the most effective tools for advancing public diplomacy. Africa is not able to benefit from these radical changes in access to information because of its digital isolation. Africa (apart from South Africa) is linked to the developed world by a single fiber-optic cable along the West Africa coast. Plans to extend to the east coast as well as to the interior of the continent have been slow and frustrating. A more robust response with specific targets on helping to reduce cost and installing communications facilities such as satellite links are urgently needed. The Forth Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD IV) provides African heads of state, Japanese leaders and the private sector a unique opportunity to adopt clear targets to get Africa s universities into the modern knowledge economy. Providing low-cost high-speed internet access to African universities will help Africa build the capacity needed to facilitate research cooperation with the rest of the world and be able to solve its own problems. This could lead to the creation of a new generation of broadband grant colleges that could do for Africa in the information age what land-grand colleges did for the United States in the age of agricultural modernization. Broadband grants and support for low-cost, high-speed internet is one of the most strategic investments that the G8 member countries can make in Africa in the coming few years.

3 Introduction Education is the key to development, and higher education is equally as important as primary education: growing Africa's economies requires a steady supply of graduates with technical training, including engineers, doctors, scientists, and business leaders. To produce competitively-trained graduates, African universities need access to the same information available to students and faculty in universities in the rest of the world, and therefore to the internet. At present, however, African universities face internet connection costs that are the highest in the world, and African students therefore have less internet access than do students in any other region. Access to knowledge is the lifeline of knowledge-based institutions and should be accorded the same priority as other critical infrastructure needs. Today, universities without high-speed internet are like markets without roads. We urge governments to take simple regulatory steps to ensure that African students can share in access to the world's knowledge bases. Internet use in universities The internet is vital to university education and research in all Northern universities. In the last two decades, the internet has become the backbone of scientific communication. In research, scientific collaborations now occur via . Data and results are shared over the internet, and in some cases computing is performed remotely via the internet on distant computers. Students find information about universities, programs, research groups, and conferences via web pages. The bulk of knowledge generated by modern science is also found online. Research results are now archived in research journals, which do have paper editions but which are primarily accessed as electronic files via the internet. Without access to these, students are cut off from viewing the bulk of modern research. Internet access is even more important for universities in developing countries with more limited budgets, because internet access can provide a pathway to knowledge content that would otherwise be prohibitively expensive: textbooks, course materials, and research results. The pace of scientific progress is such that purchasing paper textbooks that reflect the most recent developments in science and technology (or even in law, business, and politics) is a prohibitive cost. The internet, on the other hand, can serve as a repository for the most up-to-date information. Recent years have seen a growing movement to archive all manner of information freely available to all. Several projects scan and archive entire books, either new textbooks or classic works (for example, Project Gutenberg or Wiki Books). Many universities, led by the example of MIT, have also begun archiving entire courses online for free public access by all: video of lectures and files of notes, assignments, and course materials. MIT has in fact planned to begin offering its entire catalog of courses freely available to the world as of Finally, although research journals can be costly, there is a growing movement to offer public access to journal articles, and many agencies even now are bundling research results and making them publicly available (e.g., AGORA for agricultural research and HINARI for health studies).

4 Given a good enough internet connection, students and faculty anywhere in the world can share in the knowledge of the world's top research universities, as well as participate in international discussions. The internet links universities in all countries into the global knowledge base. Internet in African universities Internet usage is exploding in Africa, growing at some 30% per year, and already over 4% of the population in sub-saharan Africa now uses the internet. African universities of the size of the University of Tokyo have the Internet capability of a single Japanese household. Put another way, it is like 30,000 people trying to use a single household connection. This is impracticable and as a result most African universities hardly benefit from the abundant scientific and technical knowledge against world; imagine a road designed for three people being used by 30,000 or must be restricted to only a few users. A 1999 study of internet use in African universities revealed that in some universities, the connection was too slow to permit downloading a single research paper. This lack of access means that African university students and faculty cannot benefit from the knowledge they should have access to. Demand for university education in sub-saharan Africa is exploding, with enrolments growing faster than anywhere else in the world. This new generation of university graduates should be drivers of African economies, but without access to information those students will be cut off from knowledge in the remainder of the world. Internet costs in Africa The overwhelming reason for limited internet access in African universities is that access costs are high. Communications costs in sub-saharan Africa are the highest in the world, and African universities face costs of for internet bandwidth that are over 20 times as high as those in Northern universities. Providing adequate access is simply unaffordable. Costs are high in part because of lack of communication infrastructure - the optical fibers and links that carry internet signals but primarily because of the related lack of competition. A single undersea optical-fiber cable carries information to the west side of the African continent, and East Africa has no means at all of outside connection other than satellites. This lack of infrastructure feeds the primary issue in keeping costs high: the monopoly organization of most communications companies in Africa. Both the undersea cables and the local service providers that distribute that information within a country or region are typically run as monopolies with limited or no competition on price. The result is that operators charge the highest prices their market will bear, and the cost of communications has been shown to be a significant drag on African economic and educational growth. Africa (not including South Africa) is linked to the developed world through a single fiber-optic cable (SAT-3) that runs along the West Africa coast. In 2002 a consortium of 35 firms completed the construction of the $600 million SAT-3/SAFE cable linking Portugal to Malaysia via Morocco 2

5 and South Africa but bypassing the east African coast. The monopoly structure and the low volume, high price business model of the investment has kept the price of internet access beyond the reach of most universities. The cost to operators is estimated to be about $2, 000/Mbps per month. But average prices are estimated to be $13,000 per month and have reach peak levels of $25,000 per month. As a result, the high prices the cable s capacity utilization is estimated to be a meager 5%. There are three competing initiative aiming to connect undersea cable to eastern Africa. The first is SEACOM, a Mauritius-based firm that seeks to invest $650 million to cover 15,000 km connecting Djibouti, Kenya, Tanzania, Mozambique, Madagascar, South Africa France and India. It will provide 1.28 terabits per second, 10 times the capacity of the SAT-3. The second proposal is the East African Submarine Cable System (EASSy) covering 9900 km at an initial capacity of 20 gigabits per second. The third proposal is the East African Marine System (TEAMS) projected to cover 4887 km from the United Arab Emirates to Mombasa in Kenya. It will operate at an initial capacity of 40 gigabits second. France s Alcatel-Lucent has started construction from and they project to complete the work next year. Competing business interests, lack of coherent regional infrastructure policies and political interference have slowed down the implementation of these projects. Additional approaches such as satellite links, though more expensive, need to be considered as well, especially for universities with no access to fiber optical cables. Options for action Although increased competition in the communications sector would benefit African countries in many ways, the short-term crisis of university education demands a more immediate solution. Immediate, limited government actions can greatly assist universities and university education in Africa. Both local internet service providers (ISPs) and cable operators connecting to African nations operate under licenses granted by the respective government agencies. One remedy to the university connectivity problem is to require provision of subsidized or free bandwidth to universities as a condition of granting these licenses. Governments may wish to enact laws requiring universities to acquire high-speed internet access in the same way that they require them to have critical infrastructure such as electricity, water and roads as well as a certain about of land (of which many countries have a minimum requirement of 20 hectares). Many writers on connection issues have suggested that a target bandwidth for universities is about one gigabyte per second, typical of industrialized country universities. This connection rate would be an improvement over current conditions by a factor of a thousand or more, but still would represent a small fraction of total capacity. Providing university access would therefore have only a small impact on communications company revenue, but would provide large collateral benefits to African economies. Time is of the utmost importance in this effort. Recent years have seen a burst of new proposals for submarine communication cables to African countries, especially in East Africa. To make university access a required condition of licensing, that condition is best set before licenses on new 3

6 communications capacity are finalized. We urge that this proposal be studied seriously and implemented as soon as possible. Conclusion The Forth Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD IV) provides African heads of state, Japanese leaders and the private sector a unique opportunity to adopt clear targets to get Africa s universities into the modern knowledge economy. Providing low-cost high-speed internet access to African universities will help Africa build the capacity needed to facilitate research cooperation with the rest of the world and be able to solve its own problems. This could lead to the creation of a new generation of broadband grant colleges that could do for Africa in the information age what land-grand colleges did for the United States in the age of agricultural modernization. Broadband grants and support for low-cost, high-speed internet is one of the most strategic investments that the industrialized countries can make in Africa in the coming few years. References Bell Jr., B.W. and Juma, C Bundling Critical Information Infrastructure in Africa: Implications for Science and Innovation Policy, International Journal of Technology and Globalisation, Vol. 4, No. 2, pp Juma, C. and Serageldin, I. Lead Authors Freedom to Innovate: Biotechnology in Africa s Development. African Union, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Juma, C Redesigning African Economies: The Role of Engineering in International Development. Hinton Lecture, The Royal Academy of Engineering, 3 October, London. Juma, C Reinventing African Economies: Technological Innovation and the Sustainability Transition. 6th John Pesek Colloquium on Sustainable Agriculture, Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa, USA. Juma, C. ed Going for Growth: Science, Technology and Innovation in Africa. The Smith Institute, London. Juma, C. and Lee, Y-C. Lead Authors Innovation: Applying Knowledge in Development. Earthscan, London. Omotayo, B.O A Survey of Internet Access and Usage among Undergraduates in an African University, International Information & Library Review, Vol. 38, No. 4, pp Oyelaran-Oyeyinka, B. and Adeya, C.N Dynamics of Adoption and Usage of ICTs in African Universities: A Study of Kenya and Nigeria, Technovation, Vol. 24, No. 10, pp