Establishing Global University System in Ethiopia
(GUS/Ethiopia)
A paper to be presented at the International
Symposium
on
Telecommunications, ICT and Education in Developing
Countries
19-21 October 2004
Addis Ababa – Ethiopia
Prepared
by
Takeshi Utsumi[1], Tesfaye
Teshome[2] and Berhanu
Beyene[3]
Abstract
The Global University
System (GUS) is a worldwide initiative to establish broadband Internet
infrastructure for enhancing e-learning and e-healthcare across national and
cultural boundaries for global peace.
The philosophy of GUS is based on the belief that global peace and
prosperity would only be sustainable through education. The prime objective is to achieve “education
and healthcare FOR ALL,” anywhere, anytime and at any pace.
To attain its goal, the
GUS will create a worldwide consortium with partnerships of educational and
healthcare institutions and NGOs, particularly benefiting those in remote/rural
areas of developing countries for the eradication of poverty and isolation. Learners in those countries will be
able to take their courses, via advanced broadband Internet, from member
institutions around the world to receive a GUS degree. Both the learning (students or lifelong
learners) and teaching (professors) societies of partner institutions will also
form a global forum for exchange of ideas and information and for conducting
collaborative research and development with the emerging global GRID computer
network technology. Thus, the
higher education institutions will close the digital divide, act as the
knowledge center of their community and lead their development.
With this in mind,
concerned and far-sighted professionals from different corners are now working
hard to establish GUS in Ethiopia, so that the Ethiopian learning society could
benefit not only from the Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs),
but also from the global knowledge by creating global system for collaboration.
This short paper gives
highlight on the GUS in general and the establishment of GUS/Ethiopia in particular. The framework of the global broadband
wireless and satellite Internet Virtual Private Network (VPN) will also be
discussed. Furthermore, a short
overview on the roadmap to the GUS/Ethiopia establishment and the stakeholders
to create the local consortium will be underlined.
1.
Introduction
Economic
interdependence among nations and cultures is spawning a global economy. Globalisation also highlights clashes
of divergent cultures and belief systems, both political and religious. If global peace is ever to be achieved,
global-scale education, with the use of the modern digital telecommunications,
will be needed to create mutual understanding among nations, cultures, ethnic
groups, and religions. Internet is the future of
telecommunications and can be a medium for building peace.
The mission GUS promotes (Utsumi, et al, 2003) has triple or even more
meaning to African countries, in particular Ethiopia, where low level of
education, poor healthcare and recurrent social unrest are main factors to the
all prevailing ills.
Ethiopia, the cultural,
political and economical center of Africa, had once a unique environment envied
by many on the continent. As
population pressure intensified, deforestation, drought, poverty, food insecurity,
HIV/AIDS, loss of biodiversity became serious problems. The recurrent drought and the inability
of even to feed the whole population, which leads to look for international
food aid, leaves Ethiopia one of the poorest countries of the world. These problems are a clear manifestation
that the country is suffering from consequences of human activities. These handicaps can be indeed
substantially minimized if these problems are well addressed followed by
integrated actions. One of the
urgent measures is boosting investment in education and healthcare and
awareness to prospects of ICTs.
This short paper gives highlight on the GUS in general and the establishment of GUS/Ethiopia in particular. The project GUS/Ethiopia will build broadband wireless and satellite Internet, available to universities, schools and hospitals, and will promote the interaction among communities from different areas of Ethiopia with other communities from the rest of the world. In line with it the framework of the global broadband wireless and satellite Internet Virtual Private Network (VPN) will also be discussed. Furthermore, a short overview on the roadmap to the GUS/Ethiopia establishment, the stakeholders to create the local consortium and financing will be underlined.
2.
The Global
University System (GUS)
a.
Objectives
GUS is a worldwide
initiative to create satellite/wireless telecommunications
infrastructure and educational programs for access to educational resources
across national and cultural boundaries. It has
a long history[4] of concept
development and testing of multiple hardware configurations suitable for remote
Internet access.
The most
underlining objectives of the GUS are to build a higher level of humanity with
mutual understanding across national and cultural boundaries for global
peace. Thereby, GUS helps higher educational institutions in remote/rural
areas of developing countries to deploy broadband Internet in order for them to
close the digital divide and act as the knowledge centre of their community for
the eradication of poverty and isolation. They will also have an
important role acting as the gateway to
the world for collaboration of creating new knowledge in global knowledge
society of the 21st Century. Hence the
GUS education will promote world prosperity, justice, and peace, based on moral
principles rather than political or ideological doctrines. It has been
clear that education and skills are the basis for the new form of knowledge
economy, and are the keys in determining a nation’s wealth.
The GUS has task forces working in the major regions of the globe with
partnerships of higher education and healthcare institutions. Learners in
these regions will be able to take their courses, via advanced broadband
Internet, from member institutions around the world to receive a GUS degree. These learners and their professors
from participating institutions will form a global forum for exchange of ideas
and information and for conducting collaborative research and development with the emerging global GRID computer network
technology.
b. Organization
GUS is
headquartered at the Global E-learning Center at the University of Tampere in
Finland, under the direction of the UNESCO/UNITWIN Networking Chair, held by
Dr. Tapio Varis. Currently, institutions with faculty members who are
participating in GUS development projects include the University of Tampere, UK
Open University, 6 federal universities of Amazonia, Havana Institute of
Technology, University of Malawi, Uganda National Council for Science and
Technology, McGill University in Canada, University of Tennessee in Knoxville,
Cornell University, Texas A&M University, Maui Community College,
University of Milan, University of Salerno, University of Twente, Catalunyan
Open University, several federal and private universities in Nigeria, and many
others. GUS will serve as an educational broker for universities, thus
helping them gain international influence and access to students that they
would otherwise not reach. Those institutions affiliated with GUS become
members of the GUS/UNESCO/UNITWIN Networking Chair Program.
c.
Current Projects
Currently the GUS runs several projects, among which, the Amazon Project is major one, which will connect six federal universities in the Amazon region by broadband satellite Internet, and Community Development Networks. Coupled with interconnecting universities, this project will then connect the universities with secondary and elementary schools, libraries, hospitals, local government offices and NGOs, etc., by broadband wireless Internet at drastically discounted rates or free of charge. Similar projects are now starting in Cuba, Bolivia, Ethiopia, Malawi, Nigeria, Uganda, and have received inquiries for the same from Bangladesh, India, Cambodia and others.
3.
The Proposed GUS Infrastructure and Technology
a.
The Infrastructure
Modern e-learning and telemedicine require high-speed access to the
World Wide Web. Multi-media requirements might include two-way audio,
full-motion videoconferencing up to MPEG4 quality, television-quality
net-casting, and high-resolution image transfer for telemedicine. The
objective of increasing quality of audio/video delivery, high interactivity,
and broadband throughput can be seen as a global objective of closing the
digital divide to improve e-learning and e-healthcare services in order to
eradicate poverty and isolation in rural/remote areas of developing
countries.
As diagrammed in Figure 1, GUS programs and services will be delivered
via regional satellite hubs, typically located at a major university, that
connect via high-speed satellite (~ 45 Mbps) to educational resource cites in
the E.U., U.S., Japan, Canada, Australia, etc. In a sense, the regional
satellite hub is to be the major Internet Service Provider (ISP) for
not-for-profit organizations in the region and the gateway to the outside
world.
Regional hubs link to branch campuses or other regional educational institutions via microwave (~ 45 Mbps) over relatively short distances (25-50 miles), if there is no optical fiber network. Communication from the hub and branch campuses to local sites, over distances up to 10 miles, is to be achieved by spread-spectrum wireless (~ 2-10 Mbps) Internet networks, which do not require licenses in most countries.
Figure 1
The buildings with a broadband Internet connection will then also become
relay points for the low-cost "Wi-Fi (wireless fidelity)" networks at
10 Mbps that are now rapidly appearing in Japan, USA and Europe. This
advanced wireless communication with laptop computer will make e-learning
possible for anyone, anywhere, and anytime with capabilities of Internet
telephony, fax, voice mail, e-mail, Web access, videoconferencing, etc.
This is not only to help local community development, but also to assure close
cooperation among higher, middle and lower levels of education.
GUS is
not limiting its efforts to university-level education. Some major U.S.
universities are heavily involved in K-12 education as a means to assure
quality in their student pipeline. The K-12 education in many
underdeveloped nations is poor to non-existent, and they produce few students
who are qualified to master a university education. The seeds of poverty
and terrorism are sown in children through ignorance and propaganda. What
could be a more important global problem to address? Leadership must come
from the universities -- including, hopefully, GUS.
b. The GRID Technology
Many now consider
GRID technology as the next generation Internet, which concept was initiated by
a co-author Utsumi almost three decades ago (McLeod, 2000). It has
demonstrated all of the effectiveness in the scientific domains as becoming a
de-facto e-Science technology infrastructure.
This technology
promises to do what the Internet has done with data on the applications. Grid computing extends the scope of
distributed computing to encompass large-scale resource sharing, including
massive data-storages, high-performance networking and powerful computers,
highly expansive equipments (i.e., microscopes, telescopes, 3D Cave),
etc.
GRID technology
defines a new powerful computing paradigm by analogy to the electric Power
Grid. At the heart of Grid
Computing is a computing infrastructure that provides dependable, consistent,
pervasive and inexpensive access to computational capabilities. By pooling
federated assets into a virtual system, a grid provides a single point of
access to powerful distributed resources[5]. Users of the GRID will then be
able:
(a) to use his/her
private workplace to invoke any application from a remote system,
(b) to use the best
suited system for executing their desired particular application,
(c) to access data
securely and consistently from remote sites,
(d) to exploit multiple
systems to complete complex tasks in an economical manner, or
(e) to use multiple
systems to solve large problems that exceeds the capacity of a single one. In this vision, the sharing doesn’t
mean simply exchange of data or files but rather a concrete access to resources
(e.g., computers, software, data, etc.).
E-mail and
multimedia World Wide Web of Internet so far contributed significantly to the
world society on the dissemination of information. The next phase of the
Internet development with global neural (or GRID) computer networks should be
the globally collaborative experiential (the so-called "hands-on")
learning and constructive creation of wisdom with interactive actions on
virtual reality simulation models of joint global research and development
projects on various subjects.
4.
The GUS/Ethiopia
a.
Objective
The Global University System in Ethiopia (GUS/Ethiopia) aims to technological alternatives to promote access and use of the available technology for e-learning in educational and e-healthcare in medical fields with the Official Development Assistance (ODA) fund of the Japanese government. GUS/Ethiopia will be a representative of the Global University System of UNECSO, which is responsible to coordinate this project and other activities in promoting the principles of Global University System. The GUS/Ethiopia consists of:
a.) EthioNet: A broadband Internet network (with a project name EthioNet), which is planned to enhance interaction among higher education institutions. The network shall interlink these institutions within themselves and with communities in their vicinity, nationwide and that of international (with the Global University System). The network, by paving the venue to communication, will ultimately enable life-long learning and e-learning in higher education. EthioNet will, by the same token, promote e-healthcare in hospitals, health centers and clinics.
b.) LCDN: Local Community Development Networks (LCDNs) which is
to link diverse rural communities for knowledge sharing through exchange of
experiences. In short, the LCDN
fosters public services supported by ICTs.
The consortium (EthioNet
and LCDN) will play a major role in this initiative because they are located in
regions where application of ICT is growing steadily. Some of the benefits of this project are depicted below.
b.
Technological
innovation
The main focus of the
proposed broadband Internet (see Figure 1) is either or both of satellite and
terrestrial (microwave and/or spread-spectrum) wireless approach in viewpoints
of the region’s geographical constraints and their cost effectiveness. At the main campuses of the affiliated
universities, the spread-spectrum with 802.11b (or g) protocol will be the most
cost-effective option for their local area networking. The community development network in
the cities of the affiliated colleges and universities will also be connected
with this technology. Students of
the universities and all schools in the cities will then be able to access
Internet at high speed wherever they are within the coverage of its
antenna. This is to provide
e-learners with self-pacing, interactive, and customized courses that are
perfect fit to learner motivation and target language environment.
The technologies
GUS/Ethiopia promotes are introducing new technologies to the education and
health sectors, but the linkage effect they produce will have an overwhelming
technological innovation, especially to rural areas. To mention few:
(i). Use of
broadband Internet connection:
•
Teleconferences, based
on text
•
Videoconferences
•
Web-based instructions
•
Local experts assistance
to medium size enterprises
•
Multimedia web-based
educational course development
•
Scientific knowledge
creation and exchange
(ii). Two-way
interactive use in e-healthcare, environmental education and training:
• Access to environmental databases and monitoring
information
• Access to medical data bases
• Medical training
• Remote diagnostics
• Emergency support, like in floods and fire situations
• Prevention care
After successful
experimental installation of these technologies for interconnecting in some
schools in Addis Ababa, we plan to emulate and expand it in the cities of other
colleges and universities in the project sites, as well as the vicinity.
c.
Socio-economic
benefits
Social benefits are indeed the development objective to be attained (including the results of technological and economical benefits directly or indirectly). This project of deploying EthioNet and LCDNs is a community development approach, as firstly connecting non-profit organizations (higher and secondly educational institutions, libraries, hospitals, local governmental agencies, etc.), and, at later stage, with profit-making organizations (investors in these sectors), depending on the regulation of the federal government of Ethiopia, in order to have global E-Rate. Subsequently, all applicable groups in the cities of the affiliated colleges and universities are inclusive. This will, in the long run, attract domestic and international investors particularly to education sector. For sustaining application of e-learning and e-healthcare, more participants can share the cost of expensive digital satellite trunk line better[6]. The use of broadband wireless Internet for the LCDN will make their participation easy so that the so-called "last-mile" problem to reach individual end-users can more effectively be solved. This approach will not only contribute to the problem of digital literacy among poor, but also create new job opportunities to the graduates of the universities.
d.
Cost Effectiveness of Wireless Broadband
Internet
The cost effectiveness of
this project of deploying community development networks is;
1. The proposed activities provide the most cost
effective method to promote the use of advanced broadband Internet for the
benefit of societies residing in and around the pilot projects and later can
reach the whole remote/rural areas of Ethiopia.
2. The wireless Internet requires
a.
less regulations,
b.
less initial investment,
c.
less operating
costs. (After initial investment
in transceivers and antennas, expensive recurring cost for leasing broadband
Internet does not need to be paid.)
3. E-learning and e-healthcare can thus provide;
a.
more flexibility,
b.
more enhanced content
and
c.
more accessibility.
e. Replicability
This activity is to be a
model replicable to other regions and localities, as leading the use of the
advanced Internet in various sectors of societies. The local higher educational institution participants will
have the broadband Internet satellite earth station, and will become the major
Internet Service Provider (ISP) to the local community of non-profit
organizations. The higher education
institution will then provide teacher training to secondary and elementary
schools and promotion of digital literacy with training courses/seminars at
public library, hospitals and healthcare facilities, local governmental
offices, etc., and also act as facilitators and technical supporters to other
non-profit organizations. This
teacher-training and technical support can be the on-the-job training of the
graduate students of the universities, thus creating new job opportunities
after their graduation in local communities.
It is expected that interaction
among the affiliated universities will contribute to the dissemination of
information about alternatives to promote sustainable development in
Ethiopia At the same time,
the region's population will have better access to healthcare information,
which will contribute to a better quality of life. In addition, a number of e-learning courses will be
developed which will decrease isolation and offer better opportunities for
those living in Ethiopia.
In a nutshell, we hope
the scheme of this EthioNet and LCDNs projects will be replicated elsewhere in
African and other countries of developing world. Moreover, GUS/Ethiopia could serve as a hub for coordinating
universities in eastern African region.
5. Financing
a. Community Project Assistance Fund (CPAF)
This fund of the Japanese government (about US$80,000 per one application) will be used to deploy Local Community Development Network (LCDN) around the EthioNet affiliated universities and colleges to connect them with their nearby secondary and elementary schools, hospitals, libraries and local non-profit organizations and governmental agencies, with the use of fixed spread spectrum wireless broadband Internet. The LCDN in Addis Ababa will be the first one to deploy with this fund.
b. The Japanese Social Development Fund (JSDF)
Application will be made
for the Japanese Social Development Fund (JSDF)/Seed Fund (US$50,000) for the
initial activities, i.e., for the fact-finding and assessment and organizing
mini-workshop, and then for preparing a full proposal for up to US$2 to 3
million. This fund, when approved,
will be used;
1.
To deploy the LCDNs
which are not covered by the CPAF mentioned above,
2.
To deploy the EthioNet
to connect its affiliated colleges and universities and other institutions of
higher learning with the use of broadband digital microwave network,
3.
To initiate global
e-learning and e-healthcare to the Ethiopia sites,
4. To initiate joint content development, research and development, global forum for idea and information exchange with counterparts in Asia, America, Europe, and other parts of the world for deployment of LCDN and EthioNet.
c. Official Development Assistance (ODA) fund of the Japanese Government:
This fund will be used to
implement the ultimate project objectives, i.e., the infrastructure to
e-learning and e-healthcare. The
non-cultural aid grant out of the ODA fund will be used, if approved, not only
for conducting the same as above which are not covered by the JSDF, but also to
connect selected colleges and universities to the outside world with the use of
broadband digital satellite.
The strategy here is to
make broadband Internet available to many communities and the broadband trunk
line connection among the local universities as soon as possible with the use
of low cost wireless Internet units and microwave network. The broadband satellite Internet
connection from selected universities to the outside world will be made later
with the Japanese ODA fund. In a
sense, this is a bottom-up approach since the process of getting the Japanese
ODA fund takes a long time. This
approach has been taken in other African countries.
During the Okinawa Summit
in July 2000, the Japanese government pledged US$15 billion to close the
digital divide in developing countries and for the eradication of poverty and
isolation. During the G8 Summit in
Canada in June of 2002, and at the Environment Summit in South Africa in
September of 2002 they also pledged US$2 billion to aid education and
healthcare in developing countries, respectively.
GUS projects will combine
1.
the Japanese
government's ODA funds and
2.
Japanese electronic equipment
(computers, transceivers, dish antennas, etc.) with
(a) the Internet technology and
(b) content development of North America and Europe, to help underserved people in rural and remote areas of developing countries by closing the digital divide.
GUS will emulate this
approach in other developing countries around the world in the future.
6. Conclusions
The GUS program is
a comprehensive and holistic approach to building smart communities in
developing countries for e-learning and e-healthcare/telemedicine.
Initiatives are underway to create the necessary infrastructure and educational
liaisons, and some near-term educational access is expected.
GUS is clearly an ambitious program, one that cannot
be achieved by any one group, university, or national government. The
program requires substantial collaborative contribution of ideas, expertise,
technology resources, and funds from multiple sources. Those who value
the vision of GUS are invited to join this great and noble enterprise.
In summary, the expected
benefits of GUS/Ethiopia are:
•
To create a
technological culture by means of e-learning in educational and medical fields
through broadband wireless Internet;
•
To develop indigenous
educational software applications on e-learning and e-healthcare for Ethiopia
addressed to schools, universities, adult education and post-graduate courses;
•
Public and private
schools will have the opportunity to use the technology providing more content
and teaching alternatives for their students;
•
To help member
universities build a network of facilitators to support e-learners;
•
Hospitals and clinics
located in the poverty stricken areas of Ethiopia will have the opportunity to
access information and practice of e-healthcare;
•
The demonstrative effect
will stimulate communities of Ethiopia to consider the use of the broadband
Internet technology to help satisfy their needs;
•
The need for knowledge
will induce the creation of adequate content for e-learning, which will promote
the use of local human capital to support;
•
Professors and students
in technical and vocational schools and universities will have opportunities
for training and knowledge multiplication;
•
To promote doctors and
nurses training and access to modern technology in order to offer better
services for the communities;
•
To promote e-healthcare
practices among universities hospitals, and among them and local public clinics
in small towns or communities;
•
To use natural resources
from the region in a sustainable manner and benefit local and global
populations;
•
To enhance indigenous
knowledge systems in all aspects by integrating them with modern knowledge
systems so that they are made more accessible for application and learning
purposes;
•
Learners may take
courses from different member universities, obtaining their degree from the
GUS, thus freeing them from being confined to one academic culture of a single
university or country;
•
Learners and faculties
can promote the exchange of ideas, information, knowledge, and joint research
and development of Web-based teaching materials;
•
Researchers in Ethiopia
can partner with colleagues in more advanced countries, and perform joint
collaborative research and development with the use of virtual reality/virtual
laboratories for experiential/constructive learning and creation of knowledge
through the emerging global GRID computer networking technology;
• Learners, faculties, and public policy makers can
promote community development and many other advances at a local, regional and
even on a global scale.
References
McLeod, J., "Power (?) Grid!," Simulation in the Service of Society,
Simulation, September 2000
Utsumi, T., Varis, T., and Klemm, W. R., Editors
(2003). Creating Global University System, Global Peace
Through The Global University System. Tampere, Finland:
University of Tampere Press.
Varis, T., Utsumi, T., and Klemm, W. R. (Editors) (2003). Global Peace Through The Global
University System, Tampere, Finland: University of Tampere Press.
Dr Takeshi Utsumi is the
Founder and Vice President for Technology & Coordination of GUS (Global University System) and the Chairman of the
GLObal Systems Analysis and Simulation Association in the U.S.A.
(GLOSAS/USA). He is the 1994 Laureate of the Lord Perry Award for
Excellence in Distance Education. His public services have included
political work for deregulation of global telecommunications and the use of
e-mail and Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) through ARPANET, Telenet and
Internet; helping extend American university courses to developing countries;
the conduct of innovative distance teaching trials with "Global Lecture
Hall" multipoint-to-multipoint multimedia interactive videoconferences
using hybrid technologies; as well as lectures, consultation, and research in
process control, management science, systems science and engineering at the
University of Michigan, the University of Pennsylvania, M.I.T. and many other
universities, governmental agencies, and large firms in Japan and other
countries.
Takeshi Utsumi, Ph.D., P.E.
Founder and Vice President for
Technology & Coordination of Global University System (GUS)
Chairman of GLObal Systems Analysis and
Simulation Association in the U.S.A. (GLOSAS/USA)
43-23 Colden Street
Flushing, NY 11355-3998 U.S.A.
Tel:
+1-718-939-0928
E-mail: utsumi@columbia.edu
Web: http://www.friends-partners.org/GLOSAS/
Dr. Tesfaye Teshome is Assistant
Professor, Academic Vice President of Debub University. He is a member, Biological Society of
Ethiopia, Association of Ethiopian Foresters, and member of the Board of
Editorial Advisors of the Ethiopian Journal of Technology, Education and
Sustainable Development. Dr.
Teshome won Gold medal in Germany when he studied at the Technical University
of Dresden, Germany (1982) an won Fulbright Senior Research Scholar Grant, USA
(March 11, 2002).
Dr. Tesfaye Teshome
Academic Vice President
Debub University
P. O. Box 5
Awassa, Ethiopia
Tel: 251 6 20 46 27 (Office)
Fax: 251 6 20 54 21
Email: teteshcome@yahoo.com
Berhanu Beyene is the Founder and
Chairman of Association to Support E-learning and E-Health Care in Developing
Countries and researcher in e-learning
applications in developing countries at the University of Hamburg.
Berhanu Beyene
Founder and Chairman of Association to Support E-learning and E-Health
Care in Developing Countries
Vogt-Koelln-Str. 30, 22527
Hamburg, Germany
Tel: +49-40-42883 2232
Cel: +49 172 5256 138
Fax: +49-40-42833 2202
Email: beyene@informatik.uni-hamburg.de,
Web: http://www.aseleh.org