8 October, Brussels: At the GÉANT Open Day, RedCLARA and GÉANT celebrate more than two decades of building the digital bridge between Latin America and Europe

The collaboration between RedCLARA and GÉANT, which began at the start of this century with the CAESAR feasibility study and the ALICE project, has evolved into a strategic alliance that now enables direct connectivity between Latin America and Europe via the BELLA Programme and the EllaLink submarine cable.

As part of the GÉANT Open Day, held on 8 October in Brussels, RedCLARA highlighted the long history of cooperation spanning almost 25 years, which has been instrumental in the development of the National Research and Education Networks in Latin America, and of RedCLARA itself.

In a presentation given by Mark Urban, Head of International Relations at RedCLARA, attendees were taken through the key milestones of a collaboration that began long before RedCLARA was formally established and which continues today to drive the digital transformation of the scientific and academic communities in both regions.

GÉANT Open Day aims to raise awareness of the GÉANT project – one of Europe’s best-kept success stories – amongst a wide group of policymakers, with a view to laying the foundations for future cooperation in support of the research and education sector in Europe and with the rest of the world.

A partnership for the future

During his address at the GÉANT Open Day, Mark Urban highlighted how a relationship that began with connectivity projects has evolved into a strategic partnership connecting people, institutions, knowledge and innovation on both sides of the Atlantic.

More than two decades after the initial studies that gave rise to ALICE, the collaboration between RedCLARA and GÉANT – with support from the EU through its various funding programmes for international cooperation – continues to demonstrate the value of long-term international partnerships in driving research, education and technological development, thereby consolidating a genuine digital bridge between Latin America and Europe.

The origins: ALICE and the birth of RedCLARA

The history of this cooperation dates back to 2002, when the CAESAR study, funded by the European Commission and led by DANTE, identified the need to create a regional Latin American research and education network to strengthen scientific collaboration between the two regions.

That same year, representatives from twelve Latin American countries signed the Toledo Declaration, laying the foundations for the creation of the Latin American Cooperation of Advanced Networks (CLARA).

The next step came in June 2003 with the launch of the ALICE (Latin America Interconnected with Europe) project, funded by the European Commission and coordinated by DANTE. Just days later, on 10 June of that same year, CLARA was formally established in Valle de Bravo, Mexico, giving rise to the organisation that today operates Latin America’s regional advanced network.

Since then, collaboration with Europe – initially through DANTE and subsequently with GÉANT (given the success of the project run by DANTE and its international standing, the pan-European network changed its name to GÉANT) – has become one of the cornerstones of the development of the region’s academic digital infrastructure.

ALICE2: consolidating a regional community

Following the success of ALICE, ALICE2 was launched in 2008; this project, led by RedCLARA, helped to strengthen the regional infrastructure and move towards greater integration of Latin American national research and education networks.

This second phase also marked an institutional milestone, as RedCLARA took on a leading role in managing the project, reflecting the maturity the organisation had achieved, and the strengthening of a relationship based on cooperation and joint capacity-building.

Thanks to these initiatives, thousands of academic and scientific institutions in Latin America were able to integrate more effectively into the global research and education ecosystem.

BELLA: A new chapter for bi-regional connectivity

The partnership between RedCLARA and GÉANT reached a new level with the launch of the BELLA Programme (Building the Europe Link to Latin America), designed to provide both regions with a connectivity infrastructure in line with the growing needs of science, education and innovation.

Its most visible milestone was the entry into service of EllaLink, the first submarine fibre-optic cable to directly connect Europe and Latin America. The infrastructure links Sines, in Portugal, with Fortaleza, in Brazil, providing a direct route for data exchange between the two regions and significantly reducing dependence on links that historically passed through North America.

Through the BELLA Programme, the capacity of RedCLARA’s backbone network in South America was also expanded, ensuring the bandwidth required by South American research and education communities and strengthening areas such as open science, Earth observation, astronomy, bioinformatics and high-performance computing.

Since 2023, this collaboration has continued through BELLA II, an initiative led by RedCLARA within the framework of the European Union’s Global Gateway strategy and the EU-CELAC Digital Alliance.

The programme aims to extend the benefits of advanced connectivity to new countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, strengthen regional digital capabilities and promote collaboration in strategic areas such as artificial intelligence, high-performance computing, data spaces, cybersecurity and other advanced digital services.

In this context, cooperation between RedCLARA and GÉANT has made it possible to bring to Latin America global services and platforms widely used by the international academic community, such as eduroam, eduGAIN and eduVPN, as well as facilitating links with major European scientific infrastructures.

Finally, it is essential to highlight in this story the key role played by the EU, which co-funded CEASAR, ALICE, ALICE2, BELLA and, currently, BELLA II. Without this support, the cooperation efforts between GÉANT and RedCLARA would likely have taken a very long time to bear fruit.