Policy Issues

Donations of refurbished computer equipment can be a curse or a blessing for educational institutions all over the world. The lifespan of digital gadgets is diminishing, and with no strategic plan to deal with broken or out-of-date equipment, the obsolete machines become eWaste. At eLearning Africa, a discussion session led by Bernard Nyakundi from Tracom College, Kenya, will describe best practices developed by Rural Schools Educational Materials Programme (RUSCEMP) Kenya for sustainable eWaste management and recycling. Reuben Kyama and James Waititu report from Nairobi.
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Securing sustainable financial resources for quality education is a major issue for governments all over the world, but African governments face particularly big challenges, considering the comparatively small national budgets they dispose of. To deal with these challenges, Tanzania has established a Fund that is managed by the Tanzania Education Authority. eLA spoke to Mercy Sila, the Director General of TEA, about their work…
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Clement Dzidonu joined the internet scene in Africa at the very beginning. Since 1995 he has been involved in a number of outreach programmes to foster the development of World Wide Web applications throughout the Continent. An internationally renowned expert in computer science, he is also Ghana’s best-known consultant in the fields of ICT implementation and application, advisor to the president and head of many organisations related to ICT. eLA asked him about the potential and the status quo of eLearning in his country.
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Over 50 percent of the world's 6000 languages are endangered claims the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO). According to the organization’s statistics, 96 percent of the world's 6000 languages are spoken by four percent of the world's population; ninety percent of the world's languages are not represented on the Internet; and one language disappears on average every two weeks.

The languages of African, eighty percent of which are not written, are particularly threatened. The African Languages Technology Initiative (Alt-i) seeks to apply modern Information and Communication Technologies to help ameliorate this situation, seeing them as a way to preserve endangered languages as well as to help confront the problem of literacy in Africa. eLA news editor Nina Wittrock spoke to Dr. Tunde Adegbola, the Executive Director of Alt-i.
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