Despite the ongoing digital revolution, Africa’s higher education still faces a certain number of challenges. They include access to documentation. However, multifunctional centers are being built to overcome the challenges. 

The World Health Organization (WHO) inaugurated, Friday (July 15), a digital information center in Brazzaville, Republic of Congo. The infrastructure was inaugurated by Health Minister Gilbert Mokoki during a ceremony attended by Dr. Lucien Alexis Manga, the WHO resident representative in Congo. 

The center is aimed at facilitating access to the documentary resources published by the WHO on its information platforms. 

"The digital information center will facilitate exchanges between health professionals. It has several rooms, some of which are reserved for WHO teams and their partners. It also has a twenty-workstation multipurpose room that can facilitate online training,” said Dr. Lucien Alexis Manga.   

The newly inaugurated infrastructure will promote research and higher education in Congo.  It will also serve as a digital library with a collection of audio and video documents that can be accessed remotely. "We formerly had huge libraries that were difficult to peruse. With the [digital information center] initiative, everything is summarized and can be read easily and fast. The initiative must be shared at will so that [the center] can inspire others,” commented Gilbert Mokoki.

The center, equipped with broadband internet, adds to ARCAI, an artificial intelligence research center funded by the UNECA and its partners. The research center was inaugurated in Brazzaville last February. 

Samira Njoya