Bahir Dar University to Link all Campuses Online for 98 million Birr

The new technology will enables students to access resources, schedules, grades.

Bahir Dar University launched a 30 million Br Information Technology infrastructure development on Friday, March 29, 2013, for its new Yibab and Zenzelima campuses.

The projects for each campus were, a month ago, awarded to Neuro Net Plc and Symbol Technology Plc, respectively, each for 15 million Br.

The Yibab campus, which opened in September 2012, houses the Law and Land Administration departments, whilst Zenzelima, which opened a year earlier, is dedicated to agriculture.

The University is already in the process of undertaking a 68 million Br IT network infrastructure development project, since 2011, for the much older and bigger Peda and Poly campuses. These projects, undertaken by the Information Network Security Agency (INSA), are scheduled for completion in June 2013.

The plan is to equip the four campuses in Bahir Dar with three types of services, according to Molla Ababu, Vice President for Information & Strategic Communications for the University.

The first service, procurement & store management systems, is designed to control where the resources and properties of the University are at any given time. This system will also enable students to be aware of the availability of books at the library. This is in conjunction with a second system, which enables students to access the library with a local area network (LAN) and discover where on the shelves to find the books.

The third service enables students and parents to view the status of a student at the University, at anytime, even after leaving the University.  Students only need to have an account to register, and can then check the schedules, exam results and class grades posted by professors.

“There were complaints over the registration phase, since it was taking at least two weeks to register and using up a lot of resources,” said Molla.