June 15 and 16

Progress at UNIJOS

UNIJOS is a strong leader in academic ICT in Nigeria.  While OAU (see separate report) has done a wonderful job of building ICT infrastructure and technical capacity, UNIJOS is close on their heels in this area and has the added benefit of focusing on delivering services to a much broader variety of customers -- especially students. I toured the newly expanded Computer Centre, which is home to several new classrooms and staff offices.  The Centre has doubled in size, although the new classrooms have yet to be outfitted with equipment.

UNIJOS inaugurated their satellite service in June.  Still unable to secure a license from the Nigerian Communications Commission, which would allow them to work with international vendors, UNIJOS turned to a Nigerian vendor for a 128K connection.  While the service and equipment are provided by New Skies, one of many international satellite service consolidators, the local vendor winds up nearly tripling the price to the university.  Hence, UNIJOS will wind up spending in a single year -- simply for bandwidth -- as much as they have spent to build their extensive fiber optics network over the last five years.

The UNIJOS Computer Centre is now wrestling with the conundrum of how to pay for their connectivity.  They hope to recover most of the costs by charging end users a monthly access fee ($5 a month USD) and to provide Internet access to local agencies and individuals.  We discussed several options:

	become an ISP (which I think would be disastrous, given the difficulties of managing the needs of manifold customers via Nitel phone lines)
	provide IP connectivity for local ISPs (a great way to chew up a lot of bandwidth quickly)
	provide email and Intranet services to a select group of local organizations.

The Computer Centre staff is investigating ways to share their bandwidth without allowing their customers to abuse the resource.  Bandwidth sharing at such small increments has become unnecessary for most of those developing routing equipment in the West.

The Computer Centre internship program continues to go strong.  A new batch of students have been in the program for the last year, while many of the original interns have been hired on as apprentices.  A handful of the original interns have been hired away by the private sector.

Internetworks in International Development

This year's Internetworks in International Development course consisted of mostly professors and administrators, although a handful of Computer Centre interns also participated.  We met for three hours. I gave a presentation on "Satellites and Internet Connectivity" and responded to a backlog of questions that the students had after working with the CD-based lectures over the last semester and taking the course mid-term.

The students took the opportunity to present their thanks and gifts to me, Dr. Stephen Akintunde (who has been leading the course at UNIJOS for the last three years), and the Computer Centre student interns who have given much of their time and talents to tutor the Internetworks students.

Dr. Akintunde is working on having the course approved for regular credit for undergraduate students.  (A time-consuming process which is expected to take at least a year.)

The Retirement of Mrs. Ojoade

Because of their natural role in information storage and provision, and given their independent funding, Nigerian university libraries have a very important role to play in the deployment and use of ICT at their institutions.   The University of Jos has been very lucky to have a forward-thinking and proactive librarian, Mrs. Audrey Ojoade, who -- while not an avid user of the technology herself -- has enthusiastically steered her staff to digitize the library's holdings and services.

Mrs. Ojoade has also supported the growth of ICT around the entire campus both by providing the participation and services of her staff and by providing funding (or the threat of funding) for ICT projects.

For example, it was her offer to underwrite the university's new satellite connection that encouraged the Computer Committee to pursue the idea and eventually prodded the central administration to provide a loan to underwrite the costs.

This year Mrs. Ojoade reached mandatory retirement age and the Computer Centre staff was hosting a party in her honor the weekend I was in Jos.

The accolades and outpouring of affection were natural and well-deserved.  Mrs. Ojoade was feted for continuously prodding her staff towards greater forms of professionalism and service while a the same time injecting all her endeavors with high spirits and humor.

The high point of the evening for me, besides singing "O-jo, O-jo-aaaday" to the tune of Harry Belefonte's "Day-O" song  ("retirement come an' she wan' stay home...<grin>"), was the all-digital presentation put together by the Computer Center apprentices.  The students presented a Web site they had constructed with historical pictures, biographical information, accolades from colleagues, as well the pictures and texts of the presentations made only moments earlier by the evening's speakers.  Projecting their presentation against the wall of the restaurant, all activity stopped, the other diners put down their forks, and the kitchen staff crowded into the dining area as the pictures, audio, and video played.

Audrey Ojoade: A Tribute to a Retiring Librarian

Can you tell I am immensely proud of these young people?

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