April, 1998 - H-Net/MATRIX and the African Studies Center at Michigan State University were recently awarded a United States Information Agency Citizens Exchange grant to promote information sharing and network building amongst Southern African Countries and the United States through scholarly exchange and civic education. This program will bring a select group of faculty, librarians, university administrators and higher education policy makers from South Africa and Zambia to the United States during the summers of 1998 and 1999.

The African participants will spend two weeks at Michigan State where they will participate in an intensive workshop on the pedagogical and research uses of the Internet and the World Wide Web, and seminars and roundtable discussions on the Internet and its uses for civic education and democratization. Participants will spend a third week in Washington hosted by Howard University where they will receive training in advanced information systems at the Library of Congress, the Smithsonian, and the National Archives. The Washington Week will include meetings with USIA staff, as well as education leaders at the American Association for the Advancement of Science and seminars at Howard on networking-related policy issues.

During the 1998-9 academic year, the project leaders will visit the Southern African sites and conduct local training sessions in conjunction with the workshop participants, and participate in policy discussions with Southern African educational institutes. This project is part of the African Internet Connectivity Project undertaken by H-Net and Michigan State to facilitate the development of internet resources, training, and networking for African higher education. This project promises considerable benefit, with a strong multiplier effect, on academic communities and other members of the intelligentsia in these three countries and throughout Africa, Americans with professional interests in Africa, and on the structures of higher education and research in Southern Africa.