Björn Weeber on HP’s African partnerships and commitments in the educational sector (eLA 2007)

Björn Weeber joined HP in 1996 after finishing university with a degree in Physics and Mathematics. He worked in several business management functions in the company’s Education & Training department in Germany and has now been involved for more than five years in setting up HP training centres in the Middle East, Eastern Europe, and Africa (the most recent centres are in Kenya, Nigeria, Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia). He is currently working as Education Manager for Africa and managing the Core Business of HP Education for Central and Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

eLa: HP is not only known as a strong partner for enterprises regarding e-driven education solutions, but also for the public sector. Does your company have a particular focus on African countries?

Yes, absolutely. HP is involved in a couple of projects and initiatives in Africa. Our philanthropy organisation is working closely with NEPAD e-school, where HP deploys and donates ICT infrastructure and services. Just recently, we had a launch in Egypt in close cooperation with the Ministry of Education. In addition, HP and UNESCO launched a project to help to reduce the brain drain in Africa by providing grid computing technology to universities in Algeria, Ghana, Nigeria, Senegal and Zimbabwe. Moreover, HP, as global company with access to enormous resources and expertise, is also seen as a strong partner for rolling out large IT infrastructure deployments, where, for example, we have built capacity for Ministries of Finance in Africa. Additionally, we of course also work with the private sector across all industries like oil, gas, telecom, etc. in Africa, where we train IT professionals and end users on new IT implementations or necessary upgrades of the IT infrastructure.

eLa: Can you tell us more about your specific training approach?

It is critical to have the training available at the right time, targeting the right audience, together with the right content and delivery method. That is easily said but not always easy to achieve. HP takes all these factors into consideration: Our curricula and our training content is regularly updated and reviewed and contains the latest knowledge on technology and processes. We work closely with certification institutes to ensure that our trainings are aligned with the certification where applicable. We help our customer to identify the right content, depending on the target audience, and customize our courses accordingly, depending on the specific knowledge gap, so that we focus on exactly the content that is needed to address this gap. We even have a specific-skill gap analysis available to determine together with the customer the skills needed for the different job profiles and align the training and knowledge transfer accordingly.

The same applies for the delivery method: In some cases, just an update is needed, which requires just a few hours’ session. A new IT implementation typically goes along with more face-to-face training - in some cases, a combination of both is applicable, or you might consider using WBTs as preparation sessions, followed by a face-to-face training with a virtual "wrap-up" session afterwards. Thus, we help to identify and to implement the right blended learning approach.

eLa: “The solution is not to just dump IT equipment in schools” is something like a mission statement from your company. What can be done instead?

Well, the statement is of course not only limited to schools - only here it became apparent at an early stage when a couple of Western European countries made this mistake in the mid-eighties. IT doesn't help you at all if you do not understand how to use it for your purpose - "a fool with a tool is still a fool" - and you miss a huge amount of efficiency and increased productivity if you do not manage the full spectrum of benefits and flexibility that IT can offer.

Taking the rapid change in technology into account, it is important that you maximize your return on investment (ROI) by making the best use of what you have available now. To achieve this, you need to have the right skilled people in place - otherwise you will not get the ROI on your IT. The same logic of course applies for schools - if the leader ("teacher") cannot guide and lead, you might be left with just a few freaks using technology. But that's not the intention - ideally you motivate 100% of the pupils to use ICT. ICT is a brilliant tool to support the transformation into a knowledge-based society.

It is a paradox that sometimes the education sector seems to forget about educating. We are involved in a couple of requests coming from Ministries of Education to help to deploy ICT in thousands of schools and to help train a huge number of teachers and even more pupils with the help of our proven e-Education approach, which was specifically developed for the purpose of ensuring that ICT is used in schools. HP has developed different training modules, like "Basic ICT training for teachers and principals", which concentrates on how to use a computer;"teaching with ICT", which helps teachers of various subjects with the use of ICT in their daily teaching in the classroom; "Management of Change" for all stakeholders who act as change agents; as well as different levels of technical training.

eLa: In several African countries, HP is contributing to the NEPAD e-School Initiative. What exactly is your part within this project?

The NEPAD e-Schools Initiative is being led by the e-Africa Commission. Its stated objective is “ENSURING THAT YOUNG AFRICANS PARTICIPATE ACTIVELY IN THE GLOBAL INFORMATION SOCIETY AND KNOWLEDGE ECONOMY”. HP is active in Burkina Faso, Egypt, Mozambique, Nigeria, South Africa, and Uganda. At the end of this project, HP will provide these schools with the necessary infrastructure, ICT equipment, and Internet connectivity. We will have teachers who have been appropriately trained, not only in basic ICT skills, but also in pedagogical skills. They will have access to appropriate applications and digital content to ensure that ICT plays a meaningful role in enhancing education and health conditions on the African continent.

eLa:A short glimpse into the future: Do you want to expand your e-Learning projects in Africa? Are you going to establish new ones?

Well, our goal is to leverage what already exists: To ensure this, we, among other things, have established our own central content-development organization that serves HP internally with the latest and most up-to-date training across the world, which we also deploy of course for our training solutions in Africa. Additionally, we partner with a couple of companies in the education and training sector. Of course, we are also regularly looking for projects and opportunities. In addition, our cooperation with NEPAD e-Schools and UNESCO is going to continue.

Dear Mr. Weeber, thank you very much for your time!

HP Africa

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