WACREN is the West and Central African Research and Education Network. Incubation of the regional network started at AfNOG 2006 and at the Regional Workshop on Research and Education Networks organised by the Association of African Universities (AAU) in Accra in November 2006. The need to build organizational and technical capacity within constituent NREN countries was identified as a requirement for a viable network.
A regional consultative meeting held in November 2009 as a pre-event to the Open Access Conference 2009 was attended by representatives from Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Nigeria, Senegal, Togo, Mali and Niger.
Conclusions from the meeting was that the region now had adequate sea and land cables in place to fast track the establishment of the network. It was agreed that this would be an open and inclusive process and campus networks would be encouraged to form clusters to stimulate formation of NRENs where they did not currently exist.
The AAU was also given the mandate to identify a Task Team to coordinate activities of working groups to produce documents for the establishment of the RREN to be ready for presentation to the Afren community in May 2010 at AfNOG 2010