TRIP REPORT
NESDA/AfricaLink Program

The AfricaLink Advisor visited Abidjan, Ivory Coast, for consultations with the communications and information systems manager of the Network for Environmentally Sustainable Development in Africa (NESDA).

The objectives of the consultations were:

• To review the status of NESDA's Internet connectivity program for NESDA members.
• To discuss continued collaboration with AfricaLink, including possible assistance from AfricaLink help desks.

Persons Visited

Abou Bamba, NESDA, bamba@africom.com

Internet Connectivity Program

Mr. Bamba noted problems encountered in moving beyond connectivity to effective information sharing. He observed that some of those connected had not yet made use of their electronic mail access.

AfricaLink Collaboration

Two help desks have recently been inaugurated, one each in Johannesburg and Kampala. Another is envisioned for West Africa, likely to be situated in a francophone country to complement the two in anglophone countries. Each desk will work collaboratively with each other and with network coordinators, such as Mr. Bamba at NESDA, on the following tasks:

• Develop appropriate workshop and seminar materials upon request by network coordinators
• Monitor the connectivity status of assisted individuals and institutions, and maintain a database of connected scientists.
• Provide both remote and on-site technical support upon request.

Basic funding for the Johannesburg desk is provided by the USAID Regional Center for Southern Africa in Botswana. Funding for the Kampala desk is provided through an AfricaLink grant to the International Centre for Research on Agroforestry (ICRAF). Funding for the West Africa desk is envisioned from the West African Rice Development Association (WARDA). A Central Africa desk is also envisioned, perhaps to be funded by the USAID Central African Regional Program for the Environment (CARPE).

NESDA, as a prominent USAID partner, would be able to call on any of these desks for assistance, particularly in the design of workshops. Four different types of NESDA workshops were discussed, one for each of the following target audiences:

• Coordinators of networks (e.g. for Mr. Bamba himself)
• Senior staff and directors of NESDA member institutions
• Technical communications staff of NESDA member institutions
• Scientists and other users of information technologies in NESDA member institutions

The Internet Society holds an annual workshop that may prove appropriate for Mr. Bamba, costing approximately $6000 including airfare. Mr. Bamba attended last year's workshop, participating in one of the technical tracks. An appropriate track in this year's Malaysia workshop is Network Navigation and Services, intended for "would-be providers of networked information services; also those supporting and training potential information providers on the non-commercial Internet." According to the workshop announcement, topics covered include

Web servers and clients, search services, security issues, legal and ethical issues, National infrastructure issues, setting up and maintaining quality information services, special problems with servers at the end of slow links, caching strategies and mirroring, communication services and HTML authoring. The course will cover cgi-scripts and java etc. at an introductory level only. (This is NOT a programming course.) As an important reason for your attendance will be to enable you to pass on your knowledge to others, there will be sessions on how to support and train users and providers of information.

Directors of NESDA's member institutions generally meet one or more times during the year. Consideration is being given to scheduling workshops in conjunction with these meetings. The purpose would be to apprise them of the latest developments in electronic networking for their fields, and importance of budgeting sufficient resources to assure that their staff will have access.

For technical staff of NESDA's member institutions, as well as for users of information technologies, it would appear most effective to schedule workshops and seminars on a national basis. These national workshops could include participants not only from NESDA's member institutions, but from other organizations as well. For institutions of sufficient size, cost- effective programs could be developed to serve their special needs.

For technical staff, topics might include management of a central, locally non-networked electronic mail service. Under this type of service, electronic mail for a number of staff members arrives at a central workstation. A receptionist must then dispatch printed or disk copies of message to their intended recipients. Outgoing messages are received by the receptionist for transcription and transmittal. Such a system is quite cost-effective, but requires careful organizational planning. The workshop can address this planning issue, as well as more technical topics such as the handling of file attachments, ASCII encoding, translation tools, and non-ASCII characters.

A workshop for users of information technologies might include basic hands-on practical training in composing, editing, and transmitting electronic mail, document handling, participating in electronic conferences, effective search techniques, and technical support issues. Such a workshop would be tailored to the available technology (TCP/IP, store-and-forward, desktop availability vs. centralized workstation, etc.).

Mr. Bamba would discuss his network's workshop needs with staff of the help desks directly and via the AfricaLink-L electronic conference. Workshop development would be coordinated by the AfricaLink Advisor.