Toward a Virtual Academic Consortium to Promote Land Information Sciences in Africa

The land in a continent as Africa is an economic resource, a basis of wealth promoting growth and human development, and a tool of empowering and governing. Most of native africans are peasants and have their main living and fundmuntal insfrastructures based on land and land resources. Then, land adminastrating and management which are largelly tied to the diversity of the local cultural and traditional practicies should be enhanced in a good and scientific manner. For such purpose, african universities will play a major role in promoting a scientific revolution throught innovation and technology development. Certainly, every university has its own scientific community living inside or abroad. To make progress, it is indisponsible to gather efforts, create favorable conditions to promote african brains, and encourage research to face many challengies in a world dominated by the knowledge economy. Knowledge does not arise simply from having access to large amount of information but by exchanging ideas to which values have been added by particular experience of each university context. Indeed, a Virtual Academic Consortium dealling with land information (VACLIS) is extremely needed to establish a virtual mechanism networking universities that furnish education and training in land information systems and land information management. As an academic consortium of researchers, it will provide a series of tools enabling communication, development, and sharing of educational and research experiencies among the community of universities specialised in LIS/LIM across Africa. TS 6G- e-Learning