More than 10,000 students and researchers in Côte d’Ivoire will now have access to high-speed, large bandwidth connectivity as the Virtual University of Côte d’Ivoire (UVCI) has become the first academic institution in the WACREN region to connect directly to the WACREN backbone as a Premium Member. The dedicated 1 Gigabyte per second connection, which entered service in May 2022, will facilitate cooperation opportunities for the UVCI community and open up unlimited access to knowledge and collaboration across Africa and beyond. With this connection, the students and researchers of UCVI can, for instance, access vast volumes of data at a supersonic speed to research digital communication infrastructure, network administration, and blockchain and cryptocurrency management. In a related development, eduroam – the global WiFi authenticator for students and researchers has been rolled out in UVCI, giving students and researchers in mobility the opportunity to continue research and studies unabated once they are in any eduroam-connected sites. eduroam has now become a household name within the academic space in many parts of the World. eduroam provides simple, easy, secure connectivity from thousands of hotspots across more than 100 countries. As has been the case in the WACREN region and other parts of Africa, UVCI is expected to create hotspots at vantage locations beyond the campus to allow students to access secure WiFi networks.
