Burkina Faso to host event to promote cloud computing

Prof. Jean Marie Dipama, is in charge of setting up the Virtual University of Burkina Faso (UV-BF) and Dié Sanou, General Director of the National Agency for the Promotion of Information and Communication Technologies (ANPTIC), in the framework of the organization, from February 18th to 22nd of 2020, of activities on Cloud computing. These activities, which include training and a hackathon, will be held within the Virtual University located at IFOAD (Ouaga 2000) and will have as their theme “Fundamentals of the Cloud and taking Openstack in hand.” These talks were an opportunity to learn more about the two structures and the activity they organize together.

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Virtual University of Burkina Faso (UV-BF)

The Virtual University of Burkina Faso (UV-BF) is one of the major projects that aim to make a revolution in higher education in Burkina Faso through distance learning.

Prof. Jean Marie Dipama said that “The Virtual University of Burkina Faso is a project that has been in gestation since 2017, and which had its decree of creation in December 2018. It has its headquarters in Ouagadougou which is under construction and will have around 16 open digital spaces including three in Ouagadougou, given the concentration of the university community: two in Bobo-Dioulasso and one in each of the other regional capitals of the country.”

“The idea of creating this university is a response to the need to improve the quality of higher distance education in our country, using new information and communication technologies. Thus, thanks to the distance education we offer, we are improving the quality of higher education hitherto offered by our traditional universities, which are facing structural problems linked to the low intake capacity with the growing number of students,” continued Prof. Jean Marie Dipama.

The missions of the Virtual University

The Virtual University of Burkina Faso has three essential missions. The first mission is a technological mission: to provide the entire scientific community with a secure technological platform to host educational and scientific resources. The second mission is to develop innovative training offers in order to make the difference with the classic one already on the current market. The third mission is a research mission in innovative fields such as artificial intelligence and robotics.

The ambitions and visions of the Virtual University

The ambition nourished by the Virtual University is to be a platform that federates all universities in Burkina Faso, whether public or private, so that all students, regardless of their geographical location, have access to the technological platform and therefore all educational and scientific resources.

Its vision is to be by 2025 a competitive and efficient higher education institution in the field of distance education in Burkina Faso.

Different pieces of training offered by the Virtual University

Virtual University offers three training programs. The basic sciences where there are fundamentals of the exact sciences such as physics (everything related to energy), chemistry (innovative training in green chemistry which is planned), mathematics.

Digital sciences, that are focused on building a critical mass of digital skills, because today everyone is talking about the digital economy, which means that digital is recognized as one of the foundations of current and future development.

Finally, there is the cross-cutting science program, it focuses on fields such as telemedicine, geomatics, digital agriculture, etc.

The virtual university organizes, for soon, in collaboration with the ANPTIC, a series of activities on Cloud computing. The government of Burkina Faso, with the support of partners, has set up an infrastructure for pooling computer resources, which is the G-Cloud and which is managed by the National Agency for the Promotion of Information and Communication Technologies (ANPTIC).

For the activity in question, they organize it with the ANPTIC but in addition to the ANPTIC, they have also associated the department of computer science of the UFR/SEA of the Joseph-Ki-Zerbo University where they have proven skills in the fields of computer science.

It is, therefore, these three promoters who have joined together to carry out this activity, which is intended to promote the G-cloud through important aspects such as training on Cloud technology and competition of innovation on Cloud technology (hackathon). The ambition is that this training on the Cloud will allow valorizing this important infrastructure through a better appropriation by first-level users so that the general public can know what are the stakes related to the virtualization of IT services and all other related services.

Prof. Jean Marie Dipama added “Therefore, we are convinced that such a training activity is indispensable in the sense that, at the end of this training, the first level users will not only have a better knowledge of the infrastructure but will also become aware of all the possibilities and potentials of this infrastructure. They will thus be able to appropriate it and deploy the various services that can be deployed on it. This is the interest of this training.”

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(Featured image by Cole Keister via Unsplash)

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First published in lefaso.net, a third-party contributor translated and adapted the article from the original. In case of discrepancy, the original will prevail.

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