Abu-Ghazaleh, Egypt's Minister of Higher Education Discuss Cooperation

Abu-Ghazaleh, Egypt"s Minister of Higher Education Discuss Cooperation

Establishing an Open free zone Lightpath Exchange facility for research and education in the Arab region

CAIRO----April 22, 2013---- HE Dr. Talal Abu-Ghazaleh, chairman of the Arab States Research and Education Network (ASREN) (www.asrenorg.net) and president of Talal Abu-Ghazaleh University (TAGIUNI) (www.tagiuni.org) discussed with the Egyptian Minister of Higher Education HE Dr. Mustafa Masad ways of cooperation in the higher education field.

During the meeting held at the Supreme Council of Universities in Cairo, talks focused on strategic issues related to scientific research and education mainly establishing a free zone Egypt Open Lightpath Exchange for peering data-intensive research and education fiber links at the regional and global levels at the Smart Village in which Egypt will become the focal point of communication for the Arab, Islamic and international research and education networks.

Discussions also tackled the establishment of an Open Lightpath Exchange Center; the first of its kind in the Arab region that aims at exchanging information amongst continents. It’s well-known that Alexandria is considered a focal point for an enormous number of fiber optic that connects east with west and north with south, noting that the center will attract expertise from the Egyptian universities and will generate job opportunities for new graduates mainly in the ICT domain.

Moreover, HE Abu-Ghazaleh stressed the need to provide all required facilities for the establishment of a free communications zone to enhance competitiveness and to provide communications at lesser prices. He pointed out the potential of cooperation with the Ministry to attract scientific and technical expertise from the Egyptian universities to implement projects for the development of education at the Arab region and developing countries’ levels based on a precise cooperation framework, an idea which the Minister commended.

In addition, the two parties tackled the need to develop quality and accreditation standards related to scholar, university and technical education within the cooperation framework between the Arab Organization for Quality Assurance in Education (AROQAE) and the League of Arab States.
The Minister and Dr. Abu-Ghazaleh underlined cooperation between ASREN and the Islamic Network for Research and Education and connecting them with the available research sources at the Arab and Islamic countries in order to grant researchers, students and teachers the opportunity to access such sources through cloud computing.

Dr. Abu-Ghazaleh briefed the Minister on Talal Abu-Ghazaleh Organization’s plans to implement the first private cloud, TAG-Cloud, in the Arab region to be headquartered in Egypt and aims at providing all accounting services and software applications for public and private sectors.

Dr. Abu-Ghazaleh introduced Talal Abu-Ghazaleh University (www.tagiuni.com), an online revolution based on a strong belief that world-class education is a human right and should be available to anyone around the globe and can only be achieved by partnering with internationally acclaimed universities to bring their knowledge over the cyberspace to those who cannot afford. TAGIUNI is taking this approach and has formed several partnership agreements with world leading universities, including Thunderbird, Canisius, Bowling Green, and Amity.