About Us

Our History and The Future

The Malawi Research and Education Network (MAREN) is Malawi’s own NREN and is recognised as such by the Government of Malawi through the Ministry of Education. It was founded in 2005 by the only two public Universities then namely the University of Malawi and the Mzuzu University. This was after the two universities had seen tremendous growth in electronic resources but a big connectivity gap to access the e-resources.

The precursor to MAREN was the VSAT network at four University campuses of Chancellor College, College of Medicine, Mzuzu University and Bunda College of Agriculture (a College under the University of Malawi,now under the Lilongwe University of Agriculture and Natural Resources) installed by the Malawi Libraries and Information Consortium.

Between inception and incorporation with the Registrar of Companies in 2009, MAREN underwent a lot of stakeholder consultations and awareness both locally and internationally. The picture below shows one of the stakeholder consultations. The guest of honour was the then Minister of Information, Mrs. Patricia Kaliati.

Prior to its operationalisation, MAREN was run by a task team comprising of members of staff appointed by the founding Universities and later other stakeholders were also asked to appoint members into the task team. The new stakeholders were the National Commission for Science and Technology, Lilongwe University of Agriculture and Natural Resources and the Malawi University of Science and Technology. The first members of the task team were Prof Leonard Kamwanja, Mrs Margaret Ngwira, Mr Anthony Muyepa, Dr Harry Gombachika, Mrs Ulemu Nyasulu, Mr Bruce Zamaere, Mrs Chipo Kanjo, Mr Seyani Nayeja and Mr Paxton Zozie. In 2018, MAREN received US$4million from the Malawi Government’s Digital Malawi Project as seed funding to support its operatonalisation. The seed funding among others led to employment of key staff namely the Chief Executive Officer, the Chief Technical Officer and an Administrative Assistant, procurement of various items for setting up the data network and capacity building for the MAREN Secretariat and technical staff from selected member institutions.

Mission

To provide affordable access to connectivity, computing hardware, software and e-resources for research and education institutions facilitating collaborative research, knowledge creation and sharing of resources

Vision

Seamless access to cutting-edge digital solutions and resources for every student and researcher, enabling collaboration and innovation

Your Needs. Our Mandate

Advanced Network Services

The mandate of the Malawi Research and Education Network (MAREN) is to provide advanced network and network-enabled services to the research and education sectors in Malawi.

MAREN is recognized by the Malawi Government as its National Research and Education Network (NREN).

Objectives

To provide high-speed, cost-effective, reliable, secure and sustainable interconnectivity services to post-secondary and research institutions including teaching hospitals;
To provide a platform for the development and use of advanced network facilities and services by the post-secondary Education and Research Communities in Malawi;
To facilitate access to national and international electronic resources not readily accessible because of bandwidth and hardware constraints and optimise the efforts of researchers to create, manage, discover and disseminate knowledge;
To provide state of the art cyber-infrastructure to support the development, sharing and delivery of innovative online education content and applications nationally and internationally and the development of learning and research communities across Malawi;
To facilitate collaboration of Universities and other institutions of post-secondary education duly registered with a State department or agency and Research Institutions recognised by the Government of Malawi for purposes of, on a non-profit basis, securing and providing electronic communications network services generally, including the benefit of new developments, resources and facilities in information and communications technology, for thebenefit of the Universities and other institutions of post-secondary education and Research Institutions in Malawi;
To provide a platform for researchers in Malawi to participate in collaborative research and development projects on the international stage and access to global academic and research cyber resources;
To promote collaboration of Library Information Systems that allow institutions to easily digitize and share collections;
To facilitate access to affordable hardware, software, online resources and bandwidth through collaboration with members for purposes of achieving stronger negotiating positions and securing better terms for members of MAREN when dealing with suppliers of hardware, software, online resources and bandwidth;
To contribute to enhancement of cybersecurity in member institutions;
To contribute to enhancement of cybersecurity in member institutions;
To contribute to advancement of Information and Communication Technologies in Malawi and beyond through Research and Development; and
To provide technical support and knowledge transfer on ICT related matters to member institutions;