News

Francis Frederick Tusubira is the CEO of UbuntuNet Alliance, a regional association of National Research and Education Networks (NRENs) in Africa - primarily in East and Southern Africa – that is part of the Africa Connect project, which aims to interconnect  the region with GÉANT. Through this interview we get to know his views of regional research and education networks and  of global collaboration.

What comes to your mind when you hear that a researcher is talking about collaboration?
I always see beneficiaries – not the researchers, but our communities who are impacted positively by relevant research.  To me, collaboration is about the mutual harnessing of resources, experience, and knowledge within and beyond our national and regional borders so that the best solutions in any field can be brought to bear in improving the quality of life of our people.

What would you identify as the main importance of research and education networks?
This depends on the interpretation of “research and education networks”: At the infrastructure level, it is the killing of distance between educators and researchers around the world as well as the online resources they need, creating an immediacy of presence of both.  I used to tell my students that telecommunications is about the death of distance.  At the human level, it is the removal, through easy and regular interaction, of the perceptions that often become a barrier to the seamless and synergetic flow of knowledge around the world.

How would you describe the role of UbuntuNet Alliance at both a regional and a global level?
As we say in the Alliance, our role is creating the human and infrastructure networks that will enable research and education collaboration in order to increase the contribution of our research and education institutions to national development.

How important for UbuntuNet Alliance is collaboration with other regional networks and in what ways do you collaborate at a global level?
Collaboration is absolutely vital for our region: we are several stages behind the rest of the world.  We need to learn from the best practices and the failures of our peers in areas ranging from network design and operations; to cost and price models; to communication strategy and public relations.  We need to enable the linkages between our content networks and their peers around the world.  All these are areas of current or potential collaboration.

How do you think global collaboration among regional networks will change in the coming years?
As connectivity improves and barriers to collaboration disappear, there will be a rapid increase in the intellectual output of those regions (for example Africa) that run a very high intellectual property deficit.  This will increasingly lead to equal partnerships in global collaboration; and will also drive the demand for similarity in performance of networks anywhere in the world.  The platforms will become ubiquitous, disappearing in the background, and people and content networks will personify the global collaboration.

Could you describe your vision of R&E networks in the future?
The R&E sector is growing bigger and bigger, and as they take on board hospitals, libraries, schools, and a whole multitude of anchor institutions as planned in say US UCAN, the global mass-market will become irresistible for the private sector.  They will be able to offer the infrastructure services and applications NRENs now offer to their members at much more competitive prices.  RENs will migrate away from that layer to higher value layers of human networks, leaving the lower layers either to the private sector, or dedicated companies owned by (or hired by) RENs.