Identifying U.S-African Collaborations and Projects that Would Benefit from Expanded Bandwidth to Africa

The Internet Educational Equal Access Foundation (IEEAF), along with several partners, has received a planning grant from the National Science Foundation to propose very high speed Internet extensions, on the order of 10 Gbps, to connect the academic, research, health and non-governmental organization (NGO) communities in African countries to the rest of the world. Such connections would provide African universities and medical centers connectivity equivalent to the best available to comparable institutions in the United States. To win the large grant that would allow the network connection to be implemented, the team that won the NSF planning grant is seeking evidence of academic collaboration, particularly in science and in health, between U.S. and Africans in four countries-Ghana and Senegal most importantly, but also Madagascar and Mozambique-to help the NSF understand, appreciate, and value the impact of having these high speed connections in place.

The team is requesting information about:

• Joint projects at your institution that involve collaboration with scientists, other researchers, medical personnel, and NGOs in any of these countries.
• Joint projects with known individuals from or in these countries that would take place, but cannot currently because of inadequate bandwidth/communication between your institution and the African country.
• Projects involving existing or former graduate students from any of these countries that are good candidates for joint work upon the graduate student's returns to his or her country.
• Potential projects, previously not conceptualized or implemented because of a lack of high-speed Internet connections to institutions and researchers in these countries.

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