Speaker
Prof.
Lourino Chemane
(MoRENet)
Description
The Government of Mozambique, through the Ministry of Science and Technology, Higher and Technical Education, is promoting the establishing of the Mozambique Research and Education Network (MoRENet), to be a technical platform for shared IT infrastructure and data communication services for the research and academic community in Mozambique. MoRENet cover today 91 institutions including higher education, research, and technic professional education institutions as well as other institutions, that by the virtue of their mandates and roles are considered significant players of Mozambique´s research and education ecosystem like the libraries, meteorological, statistics and other scientific data producing institutions.
One of the challenges facing institutions or initiatives like MoRENet is the adoption of business models or approaches that can address the sustainability of their operations. The other is the clarification of the roles of all the players, specifically of the government and of the beneficiary institutions, in the investment and in supporting the operational costs of an NREN. Of particular importance is the role played by the government, usually represented by the related ministries and regulating agencies, by having the power and potential to hinder of support the growth of an NREN, and of the telecommunications service providers by the impact of the telecommunications costs on the successful operation of an NREN.
This paper will focus on the approaches adopted by MoRENet for addressing the challenges of planning MoRENet´s ICT shared resources, including data communication services provided by national and international telecommunications operators as part of the operationalization of its business model and its strategic plan for the period 2017-2019. It will also provide data demonstration the significant savings for the beneficiary institutions well as for the Government of Mozambique, the main promoter of MoRENet, by the options designed and implemented for contracting shared national and international data communications services. Another dimension of this paper will be the presentation of elements illustrating not only the receptivity by the beneficiary institutions of the approaches adopting by MoRENet for addressing the sustainability challenges, mainly those related to the definition and approval of MoRENet´s tariffs, but also of the government intervention from the policy, financial, and other kind of incentives points of views.
One of the main and ultimate objectives of the MoRENet is to be a platform that facilitate and support the launch of new collaborative initiatives between the members of the research community within Mozambique but also with their peers in other African countries taking advantage of the overwhelming options and opportunities offered by the digital ecosystem of applications and services providers, including mobile applications. This paper will share some example of how some of the actors of the education and research ecosystem are already using or planning to use in the new future MoRENet shared services for setting up data bases and information systems using group related collaborative work, in areas like management of education institutions, publication of information, assessing the quality of tertiary education, broadcasting research results in areas so diverse like health, agriculture, education, tourism, energy, and others.
Primary author
Prof.
Lourino Chemane
(MoRENet)
Co-authors
Dr
Maria Clementina Mataveia Guivambo
(MoRENet)
Dr
Nilza Langa
(MoRENet)
