African scientists meet at UR to learn ways to advance innovation through Internet of Things Technology

01-07-2019

For the 2nd time, scientists from 8 African countries were convened for training on Internet of Things-IoT. With the main focus on LoRa technology, the training tackled networking and web technologies to ensure that Internet of Things platforms are open and easy-to-use to support third party innovation. The training also looked at IoT technology and presented case studies on applications in Rwanda and other East African countries.

In his opening remarks, Dr Ignace Gatare the Principal of College of Science and Technology labelled the training an opportunity for not only to boost knowledge at a low cost but also sharing experience within African context. He added that the African Centres of Excellence have provided a forum where many people can meet and develop network that can be translated into joint multidisciplinary research to advance technology in their respective countries.

Opening remarks by Dr Ignace Gatare, the Principal of UR-CST

“Many of the issues in Africa are similar, if they are tackled in a joint contextualized framework, it builds Africa with new players who have understanding of crosscutting issues” Gatare noted, adding that the Centres of Excellence project allows African universities to have world class lecturers while hosting research experts coming to explain global technologies trends, contextualized in Africa.

Prof Santhi Kumaran is the Director of the African Centre of Excellence in Internet of Things-ACE-IoT. She attests that research driven by ambitious use cases and benefiting from innovation areas in components, systems, networking and web technologies needs to be carried out to respond to the ever increasing needs of future IoT systems in terms of scalability, heterogeneity, complexity and dynamicity.

Participants in the workshop were equipped with practical knowledge on cutting-edge technology such as LoRaWAN protocols, Prototyping of sensor board Coding of LoRa sensors to mention but a few. The workshop is jointly organized by the African Center of Excellence in Internet of Things (ACE-IoT) and the East African Institute for Fundamental Research (EAIFR) of the University of Rwanda in partnership with the Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP) of Trieste in Italy.

A section of participants in the training