SANReN (South Africa)

South African Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) colleges have received a broadband boost, which will improve the teaching and learning experience for many students across the nation.

The Square Kilometre Array, known as the SKA, will become the world’s biggest radio telescope, surveying the sky ten thousand times faster than ever before.

In South Africa, a major milestone has been reached with the completion of the University of Cape Town segment of the Rural Campuses Connection project, part of a national initiative to connect the country’s rural research facilities.

African scientists have begun to study genomic influences on disease across their continent, and the Pan African bioinformatics network H3ABioNet supports much of their research, using videoconferencing to bring researchers together across vast distances.

As research becomes increasingly data-intensive, researchers have to sharpen their data management skills. The Data Intensive Research Initiative of South Africa (DIRISA) lends a helping hand, by providing an online Data Management Planning tool, for sound collection, management, accessibility and preservation of research data.

The scale of the SKA represents a huge leap forward in engineering, telescope design and research & development towards building and delivering a unique instrument.