A few weeks ago, the sixth eLearning Africa conference was held in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. The focus of this year’s event was youth, skills, and employability and how to best deliver knowledge on the continent. Larry Cooperman, the Director of the UCI OpenCourseWare project, was one of the keynotes speakers.
Information and communication technologies are expected to play a key role in increasing access to higher education for Africans and by extension fostering an environment for the continent to enter the knowledge based ecomony. A lack of classrooms, outdated curricula and weak infrastructure hinder Africa’s ability to disseminate knowledge to its citizens. The African Virtual University (AVU) is one institution that seeks to create a Pan-African online learning network. AVU’s plans include training African university staff in eLearning, setting up eLearning centers, forming quality assurance mechanisms and building a comprehensive digital library.
For instance, in Tanzania, where there already is a teacher shortage, the use of eLearning strategies will be key:
“Currently, the country needs at least 3,200 secondary school teachers to provide adequate education to the ever-increasing number of students. Sadly, Tanzania keeps losing key teaching staff, especially for math and science courses, due to poor salaries.
A few who remain in the country prefer the private sector, where they can earn considerably more than the less than Sh400,000 per month most make in the public sector. The ministry of Education is taking steps to address this critical teacher shortage.”
eLearning will also play a role in teacher education.
Rwanda and South Africa are two other African countries that have used eLearning to their advantage according to this piece in Tanzania’s The Citizen.