African universities have very poor internet connectivity, often inefficiently using available bandwidth. Without informed management, internet connections are frequently overwhelmed by viruses, spam, peer-to-peer traffic and other malware, rendering them unusable.

The need for training had been widely articulated by educational institutions, network administrators and the national research and education networks (NRENs) who work with them. The Kenya Education Network (KENET) is an NREN providing internet and technical support to 40 member institutions.

This joint project between Aptivate and KENET addressed the need for effective internet access in African educational institutions by providing training for network administrators, and capacity building for local trainers of network administrators. The project also created a set of tested and revised training materials that were made freely available, and would be applicable to any future bandwidth and network management training.

The training was organised by Aptivate and KENET for 25 Network or System Administration staff from KENET member institutions. The workshop was made possible through contributions by the participating institutions, TENET, Allan and Nesta Ferguson Charitable Trust, The Internet Society (ISOC), KENET and INASP.

In the evaluation, all of the participants said that most or all of their objectives had been met. Almost all of the participants said they would change how they worked as a result of participating in the training. All of the participants said that they had found the course useful, with over half explicitly stating that they had learned new tools and skills.

Before the start of the course we sent a baseline survey to all of the participants. The aim was to find out details about the various institutions and also topics of interest for the course. On the first day of the course we asked the participants to tell us their expectations of the course and the timetable of the course was modified to accommodate these.

The course covered "hard" technical skills such as bandwidth management, intrusion detection and network monitoring as well as "softer" subjects such as implementing "acceptable use" policies. The practical sessions in the lab were well-suited to building hands-on technical skills and were also popular.

We created a public wiki for Open Educational Resources. All of our materials, including the course timetable and session planning cards were published on this wiki. The participants were encouraged to make their own contributions to the wiki both during the course and afterwards, when back at their institutions. An email list was created to build a technical Q and A forum for course attendees.