FOR
THE
ESTABLISHMENT OF Cairo-Net (CAIRONET) AND LOCAL COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT NETWORKS
(LCDNS) FOR E-LEARNING AND E-HEALTHCARE IN Egypt
Mission:
“To establish a broadband network for academic, health and economic
development”.
1. Concept
The CairoNet
and LCDN network will be established in Egypt to foster the development of
e-learning and e-healthcare/telemedicine pilot projects using broadband
Internet technology in order to enhance teaching and learning capabilities. The
project will partner with Global University System (GUS) to facilitate
connectivity among current e-learning efforts around the world and provide
support and guidance to selected pilot projects serving as models for adoption.
Satellite and fixed wireless broadband technologies will be
used to connect universities, hospitals, libraries, local government agencies,
elementary and secondary schools. Cairo University in Egypt will be used as a
network regional hub and act as the secretariat of the consortium (GUS/Egypt)
of those organizations. The network will link up the various project sites
across the country using VSAT, microwave radio links and wireless local loops.
2. Background
Egypt is one of the Middle East and North Africa countries
(MENA). The country has a population of about 70 million. The literacy level
stands at 25% as of UNDP Human Development Index (2002) [1].
Egypt's telecommunication teledensity (fixed and mobile) is 16% [1].
At the economic front,
Egypt’s statistics are as follows:
2.1 Cairo
University
Cairo
University was founded in 1908 in order to meet the educational needs of the
country. It has 30 constituent colleges in all branches of education. These colleges are spread in Giza governorate.
The enrolment in Cairo University is about 500,000 students. Academic programs
offered at the university are Education, Agriculture, Natural Resources
management, Engineering, Medicine, Journalism, Environmental Science, Health
related programs, Law, and more others. The university has developed important
projects in sustainable development funded both by the Egypt Government and
donor agencies such as USAID, GTZ, JICA, EU, IDRC, UNDP, NORAD, DFID, DANIDA,
etc.
3. Objectives
The project aims to achieve the following objectives
but not limited to:
- To
promote the development of communities (universities, elementary and
secondary schools, hospitals and others), with the use of high-speed
wireless Internet connections for e-learning and e-healthcare associated
with content development.
- To
promote the use of information and communication technologies for economic
development and wealth creation in the country by the participation of
farming and pastoral communities for improving agricultural and animal
husbandry practices and to engage them in knowledge and information
sharing by harnessing the emerging broadband connectivity to enhance these
activities as well as to improve welfare.
- To
promote the establishment of tele-immersion environment in the country,
which emphasizes the critical elements of the people’s cultural heritages,
history of the people as well as their daily experiences based on their
indigenous knowledge systems (IKS) by linking them to centers of learning
and promoting ICT to local language development and use in research,
recording and retrieval.
- To
create the Global University System in Egypt (GUS/Egypt) in order to
establish technological alternatives to promote the above objectives as
well as learning-ware, digital libraries, virtual laboratories and virtual
universities with high-speed wireless and satellite technology, which is
designed to deliver cost-effective transmission of voice, text, and video
content anywhere in Egypt.
4. Goals
The goals to be pursued in this project are to establish:
i.
Broadband
Internet network (CAIRONET) of universities, research centers and institutions
of learning that will enhance interaction among these institutions and, at the
same time, link them with their communities for enabling their life-long
learning to increase their productivity for poverty eradication, and
ii.
Local
Community Development Networks (LCDNs), which is to link diverse rural
communities for knowledge sharing through exchange of experiences.
5. GUS/Egypt
GUS/Egypt will affiliate with Global University System (GUS),
which headquarters is located at the University of Tampere, Finland.
The Global
University System (GUS) is a worldwide initiative to create satellite/wireless
telecommunications infrastructure and educational programs for access to educational
resources across national and cultural boundaries for global peace. The GUS
helps higher educational and healthcare 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 center of their community for the
eradication of poverty and isolation. Learners and their professors from
participating institutions form a global forum for exchange of ideas and
information and for conducting collaborative research and development with the
use of emerging GRID networking technology.
Currently institutions with faculty members who are participating
in GUS development projects are numerous around the world. The GUS affiliated institutions will be
invited to become members of the GUS/UNESCO/UNITWIN Networking Chair Program,
located at the University of Tampere in Finland. The officers of the GUS are:
P. Tapio Varis, Ph.D., Acting President, (University of Tampere, and a former
rector of the United Nations University of Peace in Costa Rica); Marco Antonio
Dias, T.C.D., Vice President for Administration, (former director of Higher
Education at UNESCO); Takeshi Utsumi, Ph.D., Founder and Vice President
for Technology and Coordination (Chairman of GLOSAS/USA). The trustee members
are: Dr. Pekka Tarjanne, (former Director-General of the ITU) and Dr. Federico
Mayor (President of the Foundation for Culture of Peace and a former
Director-General of UNESCO). The special advisors are: David A. Johnson, Ph.D.
(Professor Emeritus, University of Tennessee), Fredric Michael Litto, Ph.D.
(President of the Brazilian Association of Distance Education at the University
of Sao Paulo), W. R. (Bill) Klemm, D.V.M., Ph.D. (Professor of
Neuroscience, Texas A&M University), Joseph (Joe) S. DiGregorio, Ph.D.
(Georgia Institute of Technology, retired).
6. Project
Justification
In view of the challenges that Egypt is facing in the
education and healthcare sector, the project will help to mitigate the problems
and its consequences. The exchange of quality and quantitative information in
the broadband network will contribute to the efforts of Egypt in bridging the
digital divide. The economic benefits that will come from connecting rural
communities to the broadband network will be a meaningful and sustainable tool
to poverty alleviation, which is in line with the Egyptian Initiative for
Building The Information Society.
7. Expected
Output
The expected project output will be in the
following:
7.1 Social
Benefits
It is expected that broadband wireless and
satellite Internet, available to universities, secondary, primary and
elementary schools and hospitals, will promote the interaction among young
people from different areas of Egypt with young people from the rest of the
world. Content will be developed and delivered to the network users for
education and telemedicine use. The success of Giza community pilot project
will be used as a model for replication of the project in Egypt and other
countries in Africa.
7.2 Technical
and Economic Benefits
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. These infrastructures
will be used by the participating institutions and their efficiency will be
higher than the use of traditional networks. The project will involve the
participation of the community and other interested groups. This will not only
contribute to the bridging the digital divide, but also create new job
opportunities to the graduates of the universities, and the local community.
7.3 Poverty
Reduction Impact
The implementation of a modern communication
technology will reduce the risks threatening the country. A faster
communication network will increase the ability of people to engage in
productive activities in a more satisfying way and thereby contributing to the
drive for poverty reduction and improvement in their quality of life. Technological
propagation is not an end in itself, but a means to a larger end with clear and
compelling community benefit.
References
[1] http://hdr.undp.org/statistics/data/countries.cfm?c=EGY
Figure
1: Global
Broadband wireless and satellite Internet virtual private network