Nairobi/Berlin. The second eLearning Africa conference on ICT for Development, Education and Training closed on Wednesday, May 30, the total of 1403 participants reflecting an increase of over seventy percent compared to the 2006 inaugural event. eLearning users, providers, newcomers and experts from 88 countries spanning all continents gathered during the three conference days at the Safari Park Hotel in Nairobi, Kenya.
Approximately 73 percent of the attendees came from 43 African countries, making it a truly Pan-African event making it a truly Pan-African event. Kenya, the hosting country, had the largest participant group, followed by the Nigerian delegation and big groups from South Africa and Uganda. From Europe, the UK sent the largest contingent. Canada and the USA were also well represented.
The conference programme featured the input of 308 speakers from 55 countries, including representatives from major development organisations such as UNESCO, UNEVOC, the Global Development Learning Network (GDLN), and the World Bank. National and governmental institutions, mainly from Africa but also from Europe, Asia, and North America were also present.
UNESCO-UNEVOC, in partnership with the Commonwealth of Learning, the UNESCO Regional Bureau for Education in Africa and the German Federal Institute for Vocational Education and Training, organised the first African TVET Summit “Access to and Inclusion in TVET in Africa through New ICT-Based Solutions” with 155 participants.
“We are very pleased that our ongoing cooperation with a number of African governments has resulted in the active participation of several ministers and senior government representatives at this year’s conference“, comments Rebecca Stromeyer, project manager and managing director of ICWE, “This reflects the strong commitment of African governments towards the deployment of ICTs as a development accelerator in their national educational reform programmes.“
Hosted and chaired by the Hon. Prof. George Saitoti, the first African High-Level Policy Maker and Industry Leader Round Table and Retreat on 28 May 2007 became a milestone in inter-African ministerial collaboration related to African technology-enhanced education programmes. The Round Table endorsed a communiqué comprising recommendations and a work plan.
The eLearning Africa 2007 conference built on the success of its predecessor, held in Addis Ababa in 2006, and added several significant new features. Bringing together leading experts and practitioners from Africa and beyond, the conference proved to be an opportunity for networking and sharing of experience in the application of technology throughout the learning cycle, from primary and secondary education through to professional development and lifelong learning.
The main conference agenda got off to a superb start with a plenary on Tuesday, 29 May chaired by Prof. Karega Mutahi, Permanent Secretary at the Ministry of Education, Kenya, with the welcome address made on behalf of Hon. Prof. George Saitoti, Minister for Education, Kenya by Dr. Kilemi Mwiria, Assistant Minister, Ministry of Education, Kenya. The Hon. Kwame Ampofo Twumasi, Deputy Minister of Education, Science & Sports (Secondary & Technical), Ghana then gave a spirited presentation on the potential ICTs in education holds for his home country.
Ken Mbwaya, Managing Director, HP East Africa followed with a presentation entitled "Helping People Achieve Key Performance", in which he highlighted the work being done by HP in building products and services that are playing a key role in enhancing and improving African's use of information and communication technologies. He focussed on HP's efforts in maintaining their staff skills levels through the use of ICT- supported learning strategies and described the impact this is having, which includes greater participation, more enthusiasm, and – ultimately - increased learning success.
Esam M. Abulkhirat, ICT Senior Policy Officer, Human Resources, Science & Technology Department at the African Union, was the final speaker and gave a presentation entitled "ICTool for African Youth Empowerment". In his presentation, Esam focussed on what he described as the "revolutionary transformation" that is required of African educational systems if they are to benefit from the opportunities increasingly available through an expanded use and deployment of ICT that needs to be part of every country’s development programme and strategy.
Esam went on to argue that now is the time for Africa to become part of the global information society and stated that new technologies like Wi-Max, GSM, and energy-efficient computers that are appearing on the market can, if deployed properly, bring real opportunities to the women, men, and youth living on the African continent.
Tuesday evening's plenary focussed on the topic of "Building Partnerships for Education and Capacity Development in Africa: Finding a Sustainable Role for ICT-Supported Initiatives" and brought together panellists under the leadership of Tim Unwin of the Partnerships for Education Programme, World Economic Forum/UNESCO.
The participating panellists were Bill Souders, Cisco & NEPAD e-Schools Initiative, Micheline Ntiru, Nokia Corporate Social Investment, Mark East, Microsoft Education Solutions Group, Dr. Martina Roth, Intel Education, Europe, Middle East and Africa, Monika Weber-Fahr, World Bank Institute, and Afzal Sher, SPIDER, Sweden.
They discussed the value and impact of Multi-Stakeholder Partnerships for Education (MSPEs), which are seen as offering potential 'solutions' to many of the problems facing those seeking to enhance the quality and quantity of education and capacity development in Africa. This panel also featured significant audience involvement, as panellists answered many of the questions put forward by the highly engaged audience and discussed how to make such partnerships more successful in the future.
The conference’s closing plenary was again chaired by Prof. Karega Mutahi, Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Education, Kenya, and featured presentations by Hon. Prof. George Saitoti, Minister for Education, Kenya, Dr. Kenneth E. Keirstead, The Lyceum Group/Le Groupe Lyceum, Fredericton, Canada & Conakry, Guinea, and Anju Visen-Singh, SMART Technologies Inc., Canada. Prof. Saitoti spoke about the success of eLearning Africa 2007 in bringing together such a significant number of participants and the impact this could have on the take-up of eLearning in Africa.
Dr. Keirstead spoke about the changing face of learning in Africa and elsewhere and how ICT can be best used to improve the educational offerings, particularly to those in developing countries, while Anju Visen-Singh illustrated her presentation with examples of projects that SMART have supported in this area.
The conference programme featured special-focus sessions headed by leading organisations in the field of African eLearning, including NEPAD, which offered insight into the NEPAD e-Schools Initiative. The session run by UNESCO focussed on the UNESCO Teacher Training Initiative for Sub-Saharan Africa (TTISSA), and the one organised by the Global Development Learning Network (GDLN) featured interviews and a discussion about GDLN as a global network, with a special focus on Africa GDLN and the Association of African Distance Learning Centers (AADLC).
Conference sessions laid emphasis on the challenge of bringing gender balance into eLearning programmes that began with case examples from Makerere University, Uganda, Women's Health and Action Research Centre, Nigeria and Obafemi Awolowo University, Nigeria. The topic came to a close with a discussion highlighting the work of the Forum for African Women Educationalists and the Africa Gender and Development Evaluators Network, Kenya, amongst others.
Health featured significantly in this year's agenda, with presentations of various examples of online learning opportunities for health professionals. These include the African Medical and Research Foundation's (AMREF) initiative to upgrade 22,000 nurses in Kenya, supported by Accenture, the Global Healthcare Information Network and the Chartered HealthNet, Uganda, supported by the International Development Research Center (IDRC). Later on, a session devoted exclusively to showing examples of online courseware designed to heighten awareness of AIDS/HIV presented examples from CompuTainer Pty Ltd., South Africa, HealtheFoundation, The Netherlands, the University of the Western Cape, South Africa, and Waters Biomedical Communications, Canada.
While setting up projects and initiatives in the field of eLearning may be relatively straightforward, the challenge for those attending eLearning Africa lies in finding sustainable models, and this topic was the subject of both a presentation and a lively discussion. Examples of efforts to highlight the issue of sustainability included projects for dispersed communities in rural Canada, the Ethiopian Civil Service College eLearning initiative, as well as the work of Digital Links International. The ensuing discussion brought together several long-term practitioners who strove to identify best practice in creating sustainable initiatives with the input of the audience.
African Showcases were spread throughout the agenda, with examples of digital courseware and learning materials developed with a focus on African learners presented by organisations such as Addis Ababa University, Ethiopia, National Curriculum Development Centre, Uganda, University of Nairobi, Kenya, and ISPU Quelimane, Mozambique.
Free and open content and the provision of Open Education Resources for all types of training featured significantly on the agenda, including the presentation of the Teacher Education in Sub-Saharan Africa (TESSA) programme, aimed at supporting teacher training throughout the Continent, and the Open Learning Platform from UNESCO.
Finding ways to support learners in rural areas of Africa continues to be an important challenge that brings together several concerns, not the least of which is how to operate successful telecentres in rural regions where access to infrastructure can be very problematic. Mobile technology brings new hope to rural learning initiatives, along with re-thinking the value of traditional media like radio, and examples of projects that highlighted developments in this area which are being undertaken by the Ministry of State for Youth Affairs in Kenya and the Municipal Development Partnership in Zimbabwe were presented.
Universities continue to lead the way in Africa in the implementation of Information and Communication Technologies, and there were several sessions devoted to exploring how this is being realised. African cases that illustrate challenges in this area included those put forward by the University of Botswana, Masinde Muliro University of Science and Technology, Kenya, Tshwane University of Technology, South Africa, University of Lagos, Nigeria, and the Association pour la Promotion de l'Education et de la Formation à l'Etranger (APEFE), Congo (DRC).
UbuntuNet and the efforts being made throughout Africa to link research networks attracted quite some attention to the general topic of connectivity. This discussion was enhanced through the presentations of experiences, such as those put forward by the African Virtual University and LinkNet Zambia.
Using an innovative format called the World Cafe, a significant number of participants took part in sessions on the agenda designed to network training practitioners and help them explore and discuss ideas and issues relevant to their work. These sessions helped attendees find out more about new and existing networking initiatives, such as those built around the ItrainOnline Partnership - a network formed around a portal on ICT4D training resources. This session was led by the ItrainOnline Partnership and hosted by APC, Bellanet and IICD.
The general topic of introducing eLearning to the school system proved to be very popular, with sessions devoted to teacher training, effective partnerships for African Schools, and successful strategies for implementing ICT in schools. Organisations taking part included WITAR, Burundi, Ramos University of Aveiro, Portugal, Umeå University, Sweden, Intel IT Innovation, Ireland, HP Education Services, France , SIVECO Romania, Romania, Centre d'apprentissage du Haut-Madawaska, Canada, Ministry for Education and Vocational Training, Malawi, and the Lycée Joss Douala, Cameroon.
Harambees or networking sessions were a new addition to the agenda this year, and the response from participants to set up and lead one of these informal sessions was overwhelming. In small groups and an informal setting, participants discussed topics such as LMS‘s in African Schools and Universities, ICTs and Rural Development, Teacher Training Initiatives, Developing Africa's Business Leaders Using eLearning, and many more.
The 2007 event enjoyed the support of major international and African development agencies and corporations. The exhibition that accompanied eLearning Africa featured 43 major eLearning and learning technology providers, as well as organisations and institutions from the development network. The exhibition at the Jambo conference hall proved to be a vibrant spot for networking and meeting during the three conference days.
eLearning Africa 2008 will take place in Accra, Ghana from May 28 - 30, 2008.
Notes:
Ministers and senior government representatives who attended eLA
Hon. Prof. Geoffrey Lungwanga, Minister of Education, Zambia
Hon. Themba Msibi, Minister of Education, Swaziland
Hon. Mamphono Khaketta, Minister for Education and Training, Lesotho
Hon. Kwame Ampofo Twumasi, Deputy Minister of Education, Science & Sports (Secondary & Technical), Ghana
Hon. Smt. D. Purandeswari, Minister of State for Human Resources, India
Hon. John C. Alintuma Nsambu, MP Minister of State for Information and Comunication Technology (ICT), Cabinet Member of the Government of Uganda
eLearning Africa 2008
3rd International Conference on ICT for Development Education and Training
May 28 – 30, 2008
Venue: Accra, Ghana
eLearning Africa is a conference organised by ICWE GmbH and Hoffmann & Reif that focuses on ICT for development, education and training in Africa. The event will establish and link a network of decision makers from governments and administrations with universities, schools, governmental and private training providers, industry, and important partners in development cooperation. Each year a different African country will serve as the venue.
Notes for editors
eLA – eLearning Africa, 3rd International Conference on ICT for Development, Education and Training
May 28 – 30, 2008
Venue: Accra, Ghana
Organisers: ICWE GmbH, www.icwe.net, Hoffmann & Reif www.hoffmann-reif.com
Contact: ICWE GmbH, info@elearning-africa.com,
Tel.: +49-30-327 6140
Press Contact
ICWE GmbH
Beate Kleessen
Leibnizstr. 32
10625 Berlin
Tel:. +49-30-327 61420
Fax: +49-30-324 9833
beate.kleessen@icwe.net
press-service@icwe.net
www.icwe.net