Launched early this month, a research portal dubbed the Research and Education Network for Academic Learning Activities (iRENALA) is set to improve and introduce international standards within Madagascar’s science education and technology quarters, says the Science and Development Network, SciDev.
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According to the Malagasy Prime Minister Jean Omer Beriziky, iRENALA will help improve learning and research in the country as it is “a supplement” to the country’s inadequate resource universities and institutions.
The prime minister expects the research network to equip the country’s professionals and alleviate poverty.
iRENALA aims at promoting discussions between researchers, students and policymakers globally. It will also make accessible documents in online scientific libraries and encourage online learning in universities.
To the country’s educationalists such as Horace Gatien, president of Toamasina University and Patrick Pisal-Hamida, chief executive of Telma, the launch of the portal means a lot.
Gatien believes students will have access to latest research and academic materials online.
Pisal-Hamida says it’s a new era for knowledge exchange in the country’s higher education system as all the local universities will have to digitise their materials to access resources from other universities.
iRENALA is connected to GÉANT, a worldwide research network with more than 40 million users from over 8,000 institutions across the world. iRENALA will link also Madagascar’s six state universities, three higher institutes of technology, the Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research, and the country’s national research centres.
The research network however will not be free. According to the minister for higher education and scientific research Etienne Hilaire Razafindehibe, iRENALA members will have to pay to use the network. A management association will also monitor them.
The network is part of wider movement of digitising African universities discussed during a France-Africa summit held in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, in December 1996. The project stems from an agreement signed in December 2011 between the government and Telma, a Telecom service provider.
