Call for Papers in 2008 Closes with a Record Number of Submissions

More than 380 proposals have been received for the upcoming eLearning Africa conference, the 3rd pan-African conference on ICT for Development, Education and Training. The Programme Committee will now evaluate all submissions, and the preliminary agenda will be available by the end of February.

More than half the papers submitted came from African countries, with 61 nations from all over the world represented. The proposals included development projects and best-practice examples on Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) in education.

Amongst the applicants are universities and education institutions, renowned development organisations, grassroots project leaders, as well as large corporations and small and medium-sized companies.

“We are working hard to compile another high-quality agenda for this year’s conference,” assures Rebecca Stromeyer, Managing Director and Project Manager of eLearning Africa. “This will guarantee that eLearning Africa participants will have an unprecedented opportunity to use the conference to benchmark, learn, share and network, thus strengthening the continent’s many and varied educational technology initiatives and projects.”

Pre-Conference Events – The Warm-Up

A range of high-profile pre-conference events will take place on Wednesday, May 28th. Besides the MERLOT Forum on Open Education Resources and the 2nd Summit on ICT-enhanced Technical and Vocational Education and Training, organised by UNESCO-UNEVOC, workshops for different levels of knowledge and skills are offered throughout the day.

The World Bank Institute, for example, will offer an expert workshop on policy evaluation. Under the topic of “Knowledge Exchange and Planning: Prioritising ICT in Education Needs in Africa”, participants are invited to share insights and experiences about the challenges and opportunities that exist in a number of African countries in the area of ICT in education. Educational institutions’ needs will be discussed and concrete ways of addressing those needs, especially in relation to capacity-building.

The workshop will help determine and prioritise the key areas of skills development and capacity-building that will be addressed in the medium-term in ICT in education by the World Bank Institute, working in partnership with the Korean government and the World Bank’s Africa Region. It will also address which approaches might be the most effective.

The workshop targets ICT and education specialists from Ghana, Kenya, Mozambique, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, Tanzania and Uganda. Extensive experience of working on ICT in education issues in one or more of the countries above or in the Africa region in general is required.

eLearning and the Environment

Enhancing the outreach of environmental education in Africa is one of the long-term objectives of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). Since November 2007, the organisation has been offering e-learning in the context of sustainable development. At eLearning Africa, UNEP invites participants to an awareness-building workshop on technology-enhanced environmental education.

The goal of the seminar is to increase the awareness of environmental authorities on the cost-effectiveness of e-learning in their training, educational and awareness-raising programmes. UNEP aims at deliberately strengthening institutional capacities in Africa to mainstream environmental topics in university education across all academic disciplines. eLearning could be a key driver in this process. The ICT-enhanced training programmes offered at the UNEP learning platform are explicitly designed to meet the needs of and provide the resources for African education institutions by using low-bandwidth and open-source technologies.

Forum for Education in West Africa

An “ad hoc” gathering of West Africans took place after the closing plenary session at eLearning Africa 2007, where educators expressed their needs for a more formal vehicle of collaboration between West African education institutions. It was felt that a bilingual "forum" could give life to the concept. Subsequent meetings and communications have indicated a keen appetite for this to happen as soon as possible. The upcoming eLearning Africa conference will be the venue for the first meeting of the Forum for Education in West Africa (FEWA), designed as a membership association for education institutions, academic providers and commercial partners from Mali, Mauritania, Senegal, Guinea, Burkina Faso, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Ghana and Nigeria.

“Almost all studies of education in West Africa, for example, by the World Bank, OECD, etc., indicate problems with crumbling infrastructure, poor training and retention of teachers and professors, and the need to collaborate and thus build stronger critical mass. Partnering with Western institutions and organisations is a key strategy for development of education at all levels,” explains Dr Kenneth Keirstead, The Lyceum Group, Canada, in providing the rationale behind FEWA.

“However this is often problematic due to competing 'would-be' providers and aid organisations. The lifespan of most partnerships is typically less than three years,” Keirstead remarks. “With FEWA, we would like to organise a bilateral vehicle that enhances co-operation among academic providers, and thus create a means of significant collaboration.”

The first meeting of FEWA will take place in the context of eLearning Africa on May 28th. More information about all pre-conference seminars and registration will be available soon at the eLearning Africa website at www.elearning-africa.com.

January 31, 2008

Further links

World Bank Institute: www.worldbank.org/wbi/
United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP): www.unep.org
FEWA contact: Dr Kenneth E. Keirstead kkeirstead@lyceumresearch.com

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