The RINAF project: goals and organization

The RINAF (Regional Informatics Network for Africa) project was conceived by the Intergovernmental Informatics Program (IIP) of UNESCO and financed by a grant of the Italian Government and by a contribution from the Republic of Korea; the project implementation phase was started in the second half of 1992 and is planned to last till the end of 1995. Decisions regarding grants currently made available from the Italian Government are taken by the Steering Committee, which will operate for a period of two years in order to carry out the project goals. An African Committee was set up for the approval of all actions to be taken in order to get the best advantage of the available funds; the African Committee, which is destined to survive to the RINAF project, will represent a forum whereby the African regions define the status of utilisation of information technology means in their countries along with the requirements within the RINAF project. Stefano Trumpy, Director of the CNUCE Institute of the Italian National Council of Research (CNR), has been nominated Technical Coordinator of the RINAF Project. The task of the Technical Coordinator is to propose a set of initiatives and investments to the African Committee, based on the knowledge of the situation concerning network infrastructure and computer usage in the African countries. A structure has been set up in Pisa which supports the Technical Coordinator in taking the initiatives, testing the technical solutions and starting the training activities. The project is meant to bring basic Internet services (e-mail, bulletin boards, access to data bases, discussion lists, etc.) to several African countries. The plan is to establish five regional nodes and ten national nodes. RINAF relies on the cooperation with other initiatives operating in the African continent like the IDRC-Canada project, the RIO network of ORSTOM-France and other existing network initiatives; therefore, the protocols used and the technical solutions adopted have to be heterogeneous in order to get the maximum result from the project.