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with up to 15 team members, and they use of a range of learning material development platforms, both proprietary and OSS, depending on the specific needs of each project. They are setting up similar multimedia centres in all 11 provinces of Senegal, with three experts per centre, so that locally relevant multimedia-based learning material can be established anywhere in Senegal. RESAFAD is, therefore, attempting to establish a model to be replicated in the other centres as funds are made availble from many sources (not the government). The longer-term startegy is that this model can then be promoted throughout francophone Africa via RESAFAD, including Benin, Burkina Fasso, Guinee Conakry, Guinee Equatoriale, Madagascar, Mali, Mauritanie, Togo, as well as Senegal.
5.1.6. Collaboration Dakar is involved in both national and international ICT projects which have impact on the tertiary sector. For example, it is assisting all of Senegal’s teacher training centres by providing web site space, and e-mail accounts. It is helping establish the embryo national network for research and education, which continues to be negotiated between all HEIs. The Computing Centre Director is formalizing IPV6 for Senegal. And Dakar is collaborating with the French research and education network in Paris on educational applications of broadband networking, video-streaming, and video-conferencing. The Universite du Sahel is collaborating with Dakar and other universities by sharing their chemistry laboratories, and anticipate that this need will grow. The president believes that small private tertiary institutions like his are currently unable to collaborate at the national level, since the government only deals with the two public universities. He believes that an African Association of SMALL, young, private universities would be very beneficial for the continent, as discussed at the 2002 conference of the African Association of Universites52. World Links Senegal53 is negotiating an extension of the normal five-year term with the Senegalese Ministry of Education to extend their work linking schools to the Internet. They would welcome closer ties with the Senegalese tertiary sector, particularly to help create new, multimedia intensive learning materials (involving students as well as pedagogists and technologists, etc.), and to help with piloting, implementing and maintaining new ICTs, e.g. wireless and Open Source Software (OSS).
5.1.7. Technology Innovations Dakar’s Computing Centre has established a significant and growing technical capability in OSS, particularly Linux. They are investigating several areas: • The establishment of reliable, low cost campus PC labs using Linux servers and older PCs as thin clients. • Sustainable alternatives to existing proprietary technologies (e.g. routers, etc.) which can no longer be afforded. • The development of user-friendly local language interfaces using Linux. • The intention is to include Open Source in the Computer Science curriculum by 2004. Representatives of Senegal’s small OSS comunity complained that the adoption of OSS solutions is far too slow throughout Senegalese society, mostly because of the lack of awareness amongst leaders (public and private sectors) of the potential benefits of OSS. They asked why the HEIs had not taken a “thought leadership” role on this issues, e.g. by producing definitive studies comparing the value of OSS with proprietary software solutions in Senegal’s context. They advocated that Senegal urgently needs a centre for OSS, and that the Tertairy sector should drive the establishment of this centre, together with the private and civil sectors, supported by the international donors and development organisations. Dakar university was impressed by the spread spectrum wireless technology used in the first InfoDev project in 1996 run by the CSIR to provide connectivity to schools and multi-purpose community centres in South 52 53
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http://www.aau.org/english/documents/dakar02.pdf www.world-links.org.sn