Bandwidth Management in African University

	Impact of electronic information resources on teaching learning and research with regard to Bandwidth 	To increase access to the use of electronic resources 	Will unlock benefit from existing investments and ensure that future investment is more effective. 	Bandwidth

ASSESSMENT OF AFRICAN UNIVERSITIES BANDWIDTH MANAGEMENT

INTRODUCTION It is not good for an academic institution to operate if it is not connected to the other academic communities. This calls for a good working access to the Internet. The Internet has now become essential for access to the state of the art in any subject, to undertake and publish research and therefore to attract funding. This is just as true for developing world institutions. There are development agencies, foundations and funding organisations which have recognised the Internet as a vital tool for developing countries’ research and academic institutions.

Quite number of ideas have come up to make publications freely available online, Such resources are of great importance to researchers as is evident from the user feedback they receive and the immediate response if a system goes down at any time.

Developing country’s universities and their funders have made significant investments in Internet Connections. Bandwidth is both absolutely and relatively much more expensive for institutions in developing countries than for those in western nations.

Institutions are finding that they still do not have reliable, usable Internet access for their students and staff despite huge investment. ‘A recent BioMedCentral survey3 of health journal access programmes found that logging into some databases took so long that connections often timed out entirely.’ (INASP 2007) An Internet connection necessitates such high investment from an institution that other resources will invariably suffer as budgets are displaced. It is crucial that institutions implement management of their connections to ensure that returns on investments are achieved. Improving the performance of the information delivery is urgent if researchers and students are to benefit from the Internet and take part in the International academic community.

Managing bandwidth improves the performance of an internet connection by removing unnecessary traffic: "...improving bandwidth management is probably the easiest way for universities to improve the quantity and quality of their bandwidth for educational purposes. Bandwidth is like a pipe. It doesn’t matter how big the pipe is, if the traffic in the pipe is not managed it will clog up with unwanted traffic and be hijacked by viruses, spam, peer-to-peer file-sharing traffic and problems on the network will not be accurately diagnosed. Bandwidth management requires three activities: 1.	Policy, 2.	Monitoring and 3.	Implementation. If any one of these activities is missing then the management of bandwidth is significantly compromised. The activities embedded to each other.

CONCLUSIONS Bandwidth management is a serious challenge for many institutions in Africa. Lack of proper bandwidth management is preventing useful access to the Internet. Managing the bandwidth available would make the Internet much more accessible, especially for those with a very slow connection. All stakeholders, especially development agencies and funding bodies, senior management and network administrators, need to better understand the importance of bandwidth management before Internet accessibility can start to improve.

Need - 1.	Ability for faculty, Researchers and student to have access to the various e -resources for teaching learning and research. 2.	Effective use of e- resources acquired by the university

Objectives The objectives the project is to investigate: •	Bandwidth availability in use in African Universities •	the extent to which bandwidth is being managed and use •	the impact of bandwidth, availability and use of information resources for teaching, learning, and research Outcome 	To enhance services provided by the University Libraries for teaching Learning and research 	To increase access to electronic information resources. 	To encourage collaboration and networking among faculty, researchers and students for research, teaching, and learning 	To know the purposes for which the bandwidth is being used

Task 	Management and policy issues   Buer Are there policies? Who are the policy makers? How are the policies formulated? Who manages the bandwidth? Are they frequently trained to be abreast with current development? what antivirus software do they use?

	Awareness creation of Bandwidth use  Mary Training Conferences Radio discussion Discussion on blog Workshops/ seminars Personal communication Notices User education

	Challenges, and opportunities of Bandwidth in African UniversitiesFrank Challenges, Human resources Funding Change management Energy Opportunities Growing interest in the use of electronic resources for teaching, learning, and research

	Impact of electronic information resources on teaching learning and research with regard to Bandwidth Richard 	To increase access to the use of electronic resources 	Will unlock benefit from existing investments and ensure that future investment is more effective. 	Bandwidth 	What users are using the bandwidth for

Literature Review Methodology Data Collection and Analysis Findings/Conclusion/Recommendations