Feasibility Study to Connect All African Higher Education Institutions to High-Speed Internet

Abstract

Broadband connectivity is a critical enabler for modernizing higher education institutions (HEIs) in their mission of teaching, research, and community outreach. Connecting African HEIs for improved learning, research collaboration, and access to global scientific resources has been on national and global development agendas for many years but has never achieved top priority policy consideration. The higher education sector in Africa falls far behind the rest of the world in connecting to global research and education networks. The available bandwidth is generally expensive and limited in capacity and therefore cannot meet modern institutions’ research and education requirements. The Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic highlighted the urgent need to extend broadband infrastructure even further to facilitate teaching, learning, research, access to educational resources, and the attainment of effective administration in higher education. This report presents a summary of the feasibility study and establishes a roadmap for connecting all African HEIs to high-speed internet.