The Ghanaian Academic and Research Network (GARNET) has held its third Annual General Meeting at the University of Development Studies in Tamale. The AGM was attended by a host of key stakeholders in the GARNET community. They included representation from the Ministry of Education, Ministry of Communication and Digitalisation, Vice Chancellors, IT directors of member institutions, and a representation from the community of librarians in Ghana, among others. The AGM was an opportunity to take stock of the activities of the GARNET Board, Secretariat and community over the past year, deliberate on key issues and plan the way forward for the NREN. This year, GARNET plans an increased membership drive across Ghana to onboard more HEIs and research centres and organise workshops to build the technical capacity of its member institutions through direct engineering services (DEA). Reports at the well-attended AGM showed that the number of higher education institutions (HEIs) connected to the GARNET is currently 24, with two more to be added by the end of August 2022. GARNET bandwidth at WACREN has been upgraded from 5 Gigabits per second to 10 Gigabits per second to accommodate new connections and anticipated increased consumption by some of its members who have reached the peak consumption of their subscription. The Ghanaian NREN is also keen on driving eduroam on all connected campuses across Ghana. In the past year, GARNET has leveraged the competitive offers from WACREN to review its bandwidth prices downwards, making it the third downward adjustment in three consecutive years.
