Frequently asked questions

The African eduMEET Federation is a WACREN-led initiative to provide African research and education institutions with a sovereign, federated, open-source video conferencing service. It is modelled on the European eduMEET Federation and uses the same open-source software, but is designed for the African R&E community and seeded with media nodes across WACREN's 12-country backbone.

The African federation uses the same eduMEET open-source software and federation model as the European instance. PCSS manages the software layer for both federations. WACREN is the seed institution for the African instance, providing the initial media-node layer and managing African tenants and NREN onboarding.

Primarily National Research and Education Networks affiliated with WACREN and the broader African NREN community. Universities, research institutes, and other R&E institutions can participate through their NREN. Organisations outside the traditional R&E community that need sovereign, privacy-respecting video collaboration are also welcome to enquire.

WACREN seeds the federation with media nodes across its AfricaConnect backbone, provides the operational framework, manages African tenants and NREN relationships, and coordinates MOU arrangements with the eduMEET team at PCSS. NRENs that join as infrastructure contributors extend the federation's geographic reach and capacity.

No. There are two ways to participate. Infrastructure contributors provide server resources for media nodes and become part of the shared infrastructure pool. Service subscribers can join without operating their own media node infrastructure, using shared capacity from WACREN backbone nodes and contributing NRENs.

Yes. Every participating organisation can run the service under its own domain, for example edumeet.nren-ng.net or meet.myuniversity.edu.gh. Your users see your branding throughout.

Yes. eduMEET supports SSO via OpenID Connect. This includes eduGAIN-based identity providers, eduID.africa, and BonafID. If your institution is connected to a national identity federation, eduID.africa, or BonafID, your SSO integration is straightforward.

Rooms are classified automatically by current participant count: Meetings from 1 to 100 participants, Lectures from 101 to 300, and Webinars from 301 to 1,000. A room can move between categories as participants join or leave.

The eduMEET team at PCSS manages the eduMEET software layer, installation, updates, and federation-level operation. Infrastructure contributors operate the underlying server environment. WACREN manages African tenant configuration and NREN relationships.

The federation routes traffic through other available nodes. Meetings continue and participants are not removed or interrupted. WACREN's seeded nodes across the backbone provide baseline resilience even before NRENs contribute additional capacity.

Yes. eduMEET is an open-source WebRTC-based platform. The federation builds on this foundation to provide a shared infrastructure model, avoiding proprietary lock-in and supporting community participation in software development.

Yes. Participants can use their own logo and visual branding within their tenant. Your users see your institution's or NREN's identity, not a generic service.

A concurrent slot represents one actively running session of a given size at the same time. The federation is sized by concurrent usage rather than by total named users, which is more efficient for institutions where only a fraction of users host meetings simultaneously.

Yes. Organisations can contribute infrastructure, use the resulting slot entitlement, and add paid subscriber capacity when usage grows beyond the agreed entitlement level. Contributed cores reduce the paid capacity needed.

Partially. The media nodes where audio and video traffic flows are hosted on African infrastructure across the WACREN backbone from day one. The orchestration and management layer currently runs on shared infrastructure operated by the eduMEET team at PCSS in Europe, while WACREN holds administrative control over African tenants, user management, and domain configuration.

Contact WACREN at PMO@wacren.net to discuss the right participation path for your NREN or institution. Indicate whether you can contribute server infrastructure, prefer a subscription model, or are not yet sure.