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NIGERIAN UNIVERSITIES ICT SOLUTION PROJECT

By By

STEP-B PROJECT TEAMSTEP-B PROJECT TEAMNational Universities Commission, Abuja.National Universities Commission, Abuja.

PREAMBLE

• Nigeria is acknowledged to have capacity for innovation (ranked 47th out of 133) and a good level of company spending on R & D (ranked 40th) – thanks to Mobile telecommunications companies – World Economic Forum report, 2009.

• Unfortunately, in Public expenditure on education as a % of GNI, Nigeria is placed128th (WDI – 2009)

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PREAMBLE

• Consequently, Nigeria is 91st in Internet Access in Schools, 97th in Quality of Maths and Science Education and 115th in overall Quality of Scientific research institutions.

• For this to change, Nigeria has to invest in IT infrastructure, Access, Usage and efficiency.

• Currently, 90th in Networked Readiness Index, 102nd in % of Internet users, 114th in % of PC owners and 117th in Broadband internet subscribers (ITU – WTI, 2008 -2009)

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PREAMBLE

• END RESULT OF THESE– In the 2010 Webometrics ranking of top 8,000 Universities

in the World, the first 100 in Africa has only 5 Nigerian Universities listed.

– Tops in the country is the University of Ilorin that came in 55th in Africa and 5,846th in the World. The other four that made the list are; OAU (61st – Africa, 6,265th – World), UI (63rd – Africa, 6,396th – World), UJ (74th – Africa, 7,000th, World) & UniLag (79th – Africa, 7,246th – World)

• WE ARE NOT DELIVERING AND THINGS MUST CHANGE

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PREAMBLE

• It is to be noted that many African countries are ranked ahead of Nigeria in all of these areas.

• Without basic research infrastructure, the evolution of a knowledge economy necessary for sustained development will be impossible.

• Higher Education institutions and research agencies should drive this process of generating knowledge for national development.

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PREAMBLE

• High capacity networks provide the information highway upon which knowledge travels

• Countries as diverse as the USA, South Africa, Australia, Belgium, The UK, Ghana and Kenya have realized this and are investing heavily in infrastructure, content and capacity building. Supra-national networks also already exist in Latin America, Europe and the Asia-Pacific region.

• SANReN was launched in December 2009

• Implementing a high capacity OFC-BASED network must now be a foundational priority for teaching and research.

THE NREN INITIATIVE

• At a Workshop on Strategies for ICT Development and Access to More Affordable Bandwidth for Universities, Research and Higher Educational Institutions in Nigeria organized by the Association of Vice-Chancellors of Nigerian Universities (AVCNU) on 26 th February, 2008, it was agreed that ICT is essential for Supporting the development and sharing of online information

and e-resources Supporting collaborative research among Nigerian

Universities, Research and Higher Educational Institutions (in addition to collaborative research with others)

Running joint online courses and sharing expertise Sharing of experiences and best practices Providing opportunities for Student and Staff exchange

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The Workshop therefore resolved to establish a National Research and Education Network (NREN) while noting that the required networking and access to online resources is impeded by: High Cost of Bandwidth Absence of interconnectivity between the universities

leading HEIs to act individually and thus unable to benefit from the economy of scale

Inadequate Technical Capacity Unstable power supply

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THE NREN INITIATIVE

• The ICT Forum was mandated to take leadership to actualise the dream BUT no funding arrangements were made.

• This proposal presents the opportunity to, for the first time, establish the foundation for the realisation of the NREN dream and its attendant benefits.

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THE NREN INITIATIVE

FG INITIATIVES

• In mid-2007, the FEC approved a number of ICT initiatives;– Development of Student ICT Resource Centres in

the Universities – Computer Acquisition Scheme for Lecturers– Video-Driven Lectures– Upgrade of websites leveraging the content

server of the Federal Ministry of Education– Pooling of bandwidth requirements to achieve

economies of scale in procurement

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FG INITIATIVES

VIDEO-DRIVEN LECTURES• Fully interactive audio-visual broadcast• Lectures projected using a standard DLP

projector and audio components• Institutions can participate by simply logging

on to the video bridge at time of lecture.• The cost implications: Central hub for delivery broadcast and

management - N52 million; cost per institution – N10.3 million. Total cost implication by Galaxy Backbone – N301 million.

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FG INITIATIVES

POOLED BANDWIDTH INITIATIVE• Galaxy Backbone shall deliver:• a fully managed service with utilization reports• a 100 magebit per second bandwidth pool for on-

demand utilization across 24 universities• CPE equipment for C-band support at all locations; and• Real Time Video learning collaboration across 24

institutions.• The cost implication of the 100 Megabit pooled

bandwidth shall be N623 million.

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SUMMARY OF ISSUESSUMMARY OF ISSUES

Lack of adequate interconnectivity between universities which prevents effective

communication and resource-sharing.

Lack of adequate internet bandwidth leading to poor access to internet-based learning resources.

Human capacity constraints leading to service delivery problems.

Dearth of modern learning & collaboration content and tools leading to low-quality

teaching and research.

Unstable power supply leading to increased network downtimes.

• Presence of nationwide OFC backbone. Fibre represents a better commercial proposition when compared with satellite based systems which are expensive, susceptible to weather interference and have limitations in capacity.– More than 10,000km of OFC across the country (within reach of all

University campuses)• Arrival of marine cables

– Sat-3 (NITEL- owned)– Glo-1 (640Gb/s lit November 2009)– MainOne (1.92Tb/s to be lit June 2010)– WACS (3.84Tb/s to be lit Q2, 2011)

• Availability of quality capacity development opportunities within and outside Nigeria

• Increasing capacity and affordability of Inverter Technology14

THE ENABLERS

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The proposal intends to create a broadband network by leasing capacity from existing backbone infrastructure owners and organizing the leased capacity to form a virtual private network, connecting all institutions together and supporting the deployment of teaching, learning and management tools and applications.

The increasing capacity availability on the fibre optic networks - which support the transfer of high volumes of data - will be leveraged to create a NUBNet (Nigerian Universities Broadband Network) connection hubbed at the National Universities Commission for effective management and centralized support.

ADDRESSING THESE PROBLEMS

THE THREE SOLUTION PILLARS

Provision of Broadband ConnectivityA high-speed mesh network for UniversitiesA high-speed internet access via marine cable

Capacity building Operators’ workshopEnd-user buy-inRegulators workshopsGovernment stakeholders’ workshopsUser community training for staff and sensitization

for students

Power inverters 16

PROPOSED ACTIVITIES

Appointment of Consultants Establishment of a Network Management

Centre at the NUC Inter Connection of all Federal Universities and

NUC by fibre Internet connectivity via marine cable Capacity development programme Content development and platforms Acquisition and installation of equipment for

alternative source of energy17

PROJECT BENEFITS Economies of scale as pooled resources work out

cheaper when costs are factored on a per institution bases; for example, Current average cost of internet bandwidth per University is $4.25/kbps/month via weather and electromagnetic energy-impacted VSAT. Envisaged cost in this project is $1.50/kbps/month via faster and more reliable marine cable. This translates to about N315m per annum as against N623m for a weaker solution

Capacity building for various stakeholders; Uninterrupted power for vital network equipment.

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PROJECT BENEFITS

A high capacity connectivity that allows the institutions to communicate and collaborate effectively with each other (VoIP, Video Conferencing, remote experimentation etc) and with NUC hosted central resources, without incurring any additional network costs;

Adequate Internet bandwidth to access internet based resources for research and learning;

Centralization of applications and resources (e-books, e-journals, open courseware etc) that are best hosted at a ‘hub’ location, in this case the NUC;

Consolidated co-management of network;

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PROJECT COST

The project is structured to deliver tools and services to drive STI in the Nigerian education system with a total sum of 55,613,175.70 Million US Dollars

It is noteworthy that the cost of connecting additional institutions to the network will be limited to their last-mile connectivity needs only

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SUSTAINABILITY PLAN

The budget is for an initial period of 3 years for key project components. Within this 3-year period, it is envisaged that a sustainability scheme will be triggered from the first year with the following elements;

The Federal Government of Nigeria through the Education Trust Fund and the Petroleum Technology Development Fund will be requested to make available an annual grant to service the project.

The Federal Ministry of Education will propose an annual appropriation vote head to the Federal Government as part of its annual budget.

Contributions from benefiting institutions from ICT fees charged along with School Fees or other forms of Internally Generated Revenue (IGR).

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THE SUSTAINABILITY PILLARS

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1.Continued innovation2.Demonstration of value3.Funding4.Coordination5.Technical integrity6.Senior level championing

THE SUSTAINABILITY PILLARS

1. Continued innovation

• The proposed high capacity network must benefit from innovation on an ongoing basis. Whilst the intention is to commence with the sharing of content, tools and resources, the infrastructure can easily be expanded to support IP telephony across all campuses ensuring cost free calls within and between institutions in addition to a host of other services that will naturally be triggered by the network e.g. telemedicine, tele-presence etc

• To guarantee this, the project concept recognizes the role of a consultant who will provide quarterly reports on the utilization of the network and the potential for additional tools based on global trends. This will guarantee a proactive rather than reactive response to advances in broadband-supported education and research delivery.

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THE SUSTAINABILITY PILLARS

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2. Demonstration of value

• Whilst it is important to deemphasize cost where education delivery is concerned, a key pillar of the initiative will be continued demonstration of value in terms of what the infrastructure and resources are contributing to the advancement of science and technology education in Nigeria.

• Accordingly, part of the project design is to deliver a benchmarking template that provides empirical proof of value in the following areas:

– Cost efficiency

– Educational advancement

THE SUSTAINABILITY PILLARS

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3. Funding

• The World Bank intervention is structured only to catalyze the project. It is expected that from year four onwards the project will be fully funded directly from headline budgetary appropriations and from counterpart contributions.

• To achieve this it is intended to push for categorization of the infrastructure as critical education support system backed by legislative enactment to provide funding from the national funding pool.

THE SUSTAINABILITY PILLARS

4. Coordination• For continued operational success, expansion and

development, the project must benefit from proper coordination. The Initiative will initially domicile this with a special purpose vehicle comprising of the NUC and University representatives to ensure that the network exclusively serves educational interests within the university sector.

• If the network is expanded to include other tertiary institutions, a joint board with representation from the other tertiary regulators and institutions will coordinate the affairs of the project.

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THE SUSTAINABILITY PILLARS

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5. Technical integrity

• To guarantee technical integrity it is intended to subject the project to independent half yearly reviews which will focus on:

- Service level adherence

- Bandwidth verification

- Application and resource availability analysis

THE SUSTAINABILITY PILLARS

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6. Senior level championing

• We believe senior level championing is a key driver to sustainability. The project design involves a capacity component for this element and we propose its inclusion on an ongoing basis.

• This will always focus the leadership on the ongoing potentials offered by ICT in the delivery of their mandate and provide continued accumulation of knowledge as it develops on a global basis.

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Thank you Thank you andand God Bless God Blesshttp://www.nuc.edu.nghttp://www.nuc.edu.ng