Of Online
Learning and Teaching in Africa
by
David L. Stoloff, Ph.D.
Abstract
This
presentation serves as a review of online learning and teaching in Africa, as
well as online resources for African studies in other nations. A particular focus will be on resources
available on websites from African businesses and universities and in African
studies program internationally. Brief
descriptions of planning of the African Virtual University and the ITU Telecom Africa 2001 conference
precede a discussion on other future-oriented projects in Africa designed to
build Internet infrastructure and expand learning opportunities. An interactive version of this presentation
at http://www.easternct.edu/depts/edu/stoloff/africaonline2001.doc
may be downloaded or viewed at http://www.easternct.edu/depts/edu/stoloff/africaonline2001.htm
on the World Wide Web to allow for further explorations of online resources on
Africa.
Major Side Headings –
Online Learning and Teaching, African Virtual University, African Studies
Programs, Distance Learning
Minor Side Headings – Technology leapfrogging, Internet
Infrastructure
Mailing address:
David L. Stoloff, Ph.D., Professor,
Education Department, Eastern Connecticut State University
83 Windham Street
Willimantic, CT 06226
A Review of Current and Future
Applications of Online Learning and Teaching in Africa
A Presentation at the Contemporary African Issues Conference at
Eastern Connecticut State University, Friday, October 19, 2001
By Dr. David L.
Stoloff, Professor, Education Department, ECSU
The
applications of educational technology are never value-free and a discussion on
online learning and teaching in Africa would also reflect world perspectives
and global visions. A fascinating
encounter between two world views on technology infusion in developing nations
was captured by Manny Frisberg of Wired News at the Digital Dividends
conference in Seattle on October 19,
2000 [http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,39461,00.html]
.
On one
hand, Bill Gates, Microsoft Corporation’s President, joined those who counsel
patience in the implementation of technology.
Mr. Gates suggested that the need to tackle problems of disease and literacy
as essential first steps to lifting the bottom tier of society. He cited the estimate of 8 million children
dying each year from easily treated or preventable diseases because they do not
have access to vaccinations and medical care.
Mr. Gates agreed that there should be parallel investments in health
care and literacy and in technology, but that 80% should be committed to the
former before investments in personal computers in developing nations.
On the
other hand, Debra Dunn, Hewlett-Packward's vice-president for strategy and
corporate opportunities, described the company's recently announced "e-inclusion"
initiative, focusing on traditionally excluded markets and sustainable business
ventures to "address the unique local needs" of people in remote
areas of the world. According to
Hewlett-Packard’s website [http://www.hp.com/e-inclusion/],“world
e-Inclusion is empowering people in developing countries by giving them access
to the social and economic opportunities of the new Information Economy…doing
well by doing good...”
This
paper was designed to provide an overview of online learning and teaching in
Africa and to discuss its potential for further development. Writing this paper was an online learning
experience; the future seems to have arrived on the web on Africa. By Africa, we will focus on African nations
south of the Sahara Desert. By online
learning and teaching, we will focus on websites, opportunities for e-mail and
other online discussions, and formal learning options on the World Wide Web.
Telecommunications
– telephones, television, cellular phones, videoconferencing, and computers for
personal and professional uses – is limited in Africa. The International Telecommunications Union
reports that in the year 2000 “there is still an enormous amount of work that
must be done to bring Africa up to the levels of the industrialized world.
Africa - which is home to one in 8 of the world's people - had in just one in
50 of the world's fixed line subscribers, one in 60 of the world's mobile
cellular subscribers, one in 70 of the worlds' personal computers and only 1%
of the worlds' Internet users” http://www.itu.int/AFRICA2001/exhibition/index.html
. Adekanmbi (1999) reports that “about
27 million children of the primary school age in sub-Saharan Africa have no
access to primary education; 58.6 million of the secondary school level suffer
the same fate while the picture at the tertiary level is more dismal, with only
1.9 million students against the world’s total of 81.7 million attending
tertiary level education in 1995…. And added to this scenario, Africa’s
illiteracy rate of 140 million adults in Sub-Saharan Africa … is a problem
still staring the continent in the face.”
Given
these statistics and the public perception of the challenges of African life –
physical infrastructure, health and medical access, limitations on energy
resources and access to economic support – it would seems that Mr. Gates’
hesitation might be justified. The
following discussion will outline the current state of online learning and
teaching within these limitations.
There
is a cornucopia of websites - computer images of text, graphics, animation,
video, and the music and art of African life – available to anyone who has
access to an Internet connection and a computer workstation. These websites feature informal education,
learning outside of formal structures, by providing viewers with access to the
evolving values and history of the continent.
Many are sponsored by businesses whose goals include expanding access to
technology throughout Africa.
Exemplary
of the growth of online resources is the Life in Africa websites. The Life in Africa Foundation, “a purely
private, volunteer run initiative which was founded in Uganda in 1999,“
sponsors these websites that form a “unique collection of stories &
images from around the Continent looks beyond Africa's tragic statistics, to
focus on ordinary African people. Our pages are filled with everyday heroes
achieving remarkable things in their lives, in spite of the extraordinary daily
challenges they face, living on the world's poorest continent” [http://www.lifeinafrica.com/index.htm].
AFRICA
ONLINE [http://www.africaonline.com/site/africa/index.jsp]
provides, in both French and English, news on Africa and the world, including
sports, entertainment, business, travel, internet, education, NGOs
(non-governmental organizations), arts and culture, health, women, weather,
kids zone, life, science and technology, and shopping sections,. AFRICA ONLINE is offered by The Africa
Online Group, which “currently has over 43 points-of-presence across the
continent and provides Internet access, Web site development and e-commerce
solutions. The Group also runs E-touch, a programme that provides e-mail and
Internet access to customers who do not own computers, through a network of
over 600 walk-in centres in urban and rural areas all over Africa.”
The
South African service, South Africa Online, also provides an emphasis on
tourism and business opportunities [http://www.southafrica.co.za/index.html]. The range of information available is
exemplified by the Digital Cupboard [http://www.digitalcupboard.co.za/], which offers
an online exchange of music of current African artists and encourages the
downloading of MP3 and preview musical segments to expand the exposure of
regional and national artists.
Increasingly,
Internet users are developing their own websites to share information and
messages. CongOnLine [http://www.congonline.com/],
“the largest web site dedicated entirely to the Democratic Republic of the
Congo”, provides links to the history, geography, and politics of the nation,
as well as an online forum in French for diverse issues. Congo Pages [http://www.congo-pages.org/]
is a website developed by Returned (former) Peace Corps volunteers as an
introduction to Congolese life and culture.
Media Congolais provides space for a forum on issues of concern for
those in the Congo and its diaspora.
For example, an editorial [http://www.mediascongolais.com/editorial.html]
during the last week of September 2001] suggests that the Congolais might learn
civic lessons from the use of patriotic symbols and the government mobilization
during trying times in the US.
Afrabiz [http://www.africabiz.org/],
a business opportunities newsletter on investing and trading in Africa, hosts
forums on several development issues as well as providing news and information
about African nations and businesses.
Another example of regional development may be found in the webpages of
the African Wildlife Federation [http://www.awf.org/].
This
informal learning from websites, which are often sponsored by businesses or
individuals seeking forums, provides linkages for students of contemporary
African issues and engenders discussions worldwide. Formal, more structured, educational opportunities are build on the
traditions of distance learning and higher education in Africa.
The
leading edge of formal educational opportunities online in Africa is the
African Virtual University (AVU) [http://www.avu.org/section/about/index.htm]. “The African Virtual University (AVU) is a
‘university without walls’ that uses modern information and communication
technologies to give the countries of sub-Saharan Africa direct access to some
of the highest quality academic faculty and learning resources throughout the
world. AVU is bridging the digital divide by training world-class scientists,
engineers, technicians, business managers, and other professionals who will
promote economic and social development and help Africa leapfrog into the
Knowledge Age.”
AVU's
delivery model combines a creative integration of satellite and Internet
technologies that allows it to provide quality educational content from all
over the world at an affordable cost, while taking into account the
technological and infrastructure limitations that currently prevail in Africa.
AVU places a high premium on interactivity and local learner support so as to
ensure pedagogical effectiveness.
Building upon the success of its pilot phase, AVU has transitioned from
a World Bank project initiated in 1997 to establish itself as an independent
non-profit organization headquartered in Nairobi, Kenya. Currently, twenty-two United States
universities, 3 Canadian universities, and the Dublin Institute of Technology
originate courses in engineering and science received at 16 African
universities – in Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Namibia, South Africa, Tanzania, and
Uganda. Over 12,000 students have
completed these courses and another 25,000 professionals “have attended
executive and professional management seminars on topics such as Strategy and
Innovation, Entrepreneurship, Global Competencies, E-commerce and Y2K.”
AVU’s
objective is “to make a major contribution to higher education and university
students in Africa.” The university
administration welcomed the Australian Government’s commitment of A$6 million
to support AVU as part of its new Virtual Colombo Plan, networking Africa with
other international opportunities.
There
are others involved in providing distance learning for African students. The Association of Private Distance
Education Colleges in South Africa (APDEC), http://www.apdec.edu.za/, is composed of
19 providers of tertiary Distance Education in South Africa. They quote an unnamed American university
that “it has been calculated that a new university would have to open its doors
every 7 days this century to keep up with the demand for tertiary education
world-wide - which cannot, as it stands, possibly accommodate all the students
needing education.” The International
Center for Distance Learning [http://icdl.open.ac.uk/] lists 17 distance
learning associations in Central, East, and South Africa and 3 in West Africa. The ICDL, the research arm of the Open
University in the UK, which has affiliates worldwide, also lists 12 distance
learning providers in Nigeria and other centers throughout West Africa. There is a foundation for distance learning
throughout Africa and online learning may be building on this history.
Smart
(1999) reports that there are 10 distance education associations in Africa and
20 websites focusing on tertiary distance learning, including the L'Agence
universitaire de la Francophonie [http://www.aupelf-uref.org/auf/], the
Commonwealth of Learning [http://www.col.org/], and the Global Distance EducationNet [http://www1.worldbank.org/disted/]. Smart suggests that “new technologies will
make university campuses obsolete. Students will use asynchronous
multimedia communications delivered by the Internet and receive learning
support through virtual libraries and on-line video conferencing.” The next section focuses on ways current
university campuses support online learning at a distance.
One of the tools for changing public perception worldwide
about Africa and to expand development opportunities may be online resources at
universities on other continents. For
online learning about Africa, the Harvard African Studies Program points to the
African Studies Center [http://www.africa.upenn.edu/] at the University
of Pennsylvania as the premier site for African Studies. These webpages provide resources on Africa
for K-12 schools, a multimedia archives, and provides a link to the African
Studies Consortium of libraries in North America and Africa dedicated to
sharing online resources.
The Harvard’s African Study Links page includes over 150
African news links, research resources for academic subjects, 22 links to
international African Studies programs, and information on study, work, and
travel in Africa [http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~cafrica/links.shtml].
The Center for African Studies, University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign http://www.afrst.uiuc.edu/
features a country information page -[http://www.afrst.uiuc.edu/Country.information/country.html].
The Index on Africa developed by the Norwegian Council for Africa invites users
to server as web editors for their own topics on Africa [http://www.afrika.no/index/].
The African Studies Center Library at the University of Cambridge
[http://www-library.african.cam.ac.uk/]
links to numerous resources including http://www.yourdictionary.com/ - the leading
global language portal, which includes many African language dictionaries. The African Studies Center at Michigan State
University (MSU) [http://www.isp.msu.edu/AfricanStudies/] features
a webbook of African language resources, information on their African Internet
Connectivity Project 2000 - http://www.matrix.msu.edu/connect/ and on their
Afrobarometer Project - http://www.afrobarometer.org/ - a comparative
survey system measuring economic, social, and political atmosphere in Africa,
links to other international institutes at MSU, and to an African Resources on
the Internet site - http://www.isp.msu.edu/AfricanStudies/aflinks.htm
.
Columbia University Libraries’ African Studies Internet
Resources
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/lweb/indiv/africa/cuvl/about.html
provides
“on-line
catalogs of the world's top libraries with large Africana collections,
bibliographies from Columbia University Libraries and other research
institutions around the world, annotated archive of links to African Studies
Electronic Journals and Newspapers, The International Directory of African
Studies Scholars (IDASS), electronic news archives that specialize in African
affairs, abstracts and full-length reports on Africa from US, African, and
international organizations, information on African studies programs around the
world, scholarly organizations, and conferences, Electronic African art
exhibits, plus other texts, images, and sound files reflecting upon Africa's
history and contemporary cultures, maps, flags, and geographical data, and
links to other Africa-related gophers and web servers.” The Council on African Studies at the Yale
Center for International and Area Studies [http://www.cis.yale.edu/ycias/african/]
website includes an index to Yale University’s Library’s African collection, a
link to an outreach Programs in International Educational Resources, an online
Swahili directory, and many other resources.
Given the wealth of online resources
in Africa and at universities throughout the world, there seems to be little
excuse for limited information dissemination about Africa – except for lack of
technical infrastructure and support resources. From these online resources, a bright future might be built.
On November 12-16, 2001, the International
Telecommunications Union is sponsoring the ITU Telecom Africa 2001 conference
in Johannesburg. The conference
overview states that “AFRICA 2001 will be the next step in the African Renaissance,
and aims to help bridge the Digital Divide.”
Even recognizing the limitations on technical infrastructure in
Africa, “there are nevertheless strong
grounds for optimism. Many countries in the region are on the road to sectoral
reform and foreign investment is now being actively encouraged across the
continent as privatization and liberalization are progressively introduced.
Also encouraging is that mobile cellular subscribers now outnumber fixed-line
subscribers in a number of African countries - and by the time AFRICA 2001
takes place, the trend will be widespread. Internet uptake in many countries in
Africa is on the rise too, and there is great potential in Africa for
technology leapfrogging.”
Kwankam
and Ningo of the University of Yaounde in Cameroon suggest in http://www.isoc.org/isoc/whatis/conferences/inet/97/proceedings/B7/B7_1.HTM
that “Africa's lack of infrastructure … can be turned into an advantage if
properly managed. African countries are not encumbered by extensive networks
built on obsolete technology, which will require an evolutionary process of
replacement. The technological inertia is thus quite low. In technology
leapfrogging the extent of the leap is in inverse proportion to the
technological inertia carried along. The push should therefore be for the
cutting edge. The latest technology should be used in building new
infrastructure. African countries will thus leapfrog several stages and decades
in the IT development process. In doing so, they will learn from the experience
of more advanced countries the ways and means of providing the greatest social
benefits to a large fraction of the population while avoiding any unpleasant
side effects.”
There are several signs that Africa is seen increasingly as
a marketplace and laboratory for the expansion of technology for education and
commerce. Bray (2001) writes in the Boston
Globe of the plan to wire the continent to expand telecommunications. One initiative is ''World E-Inclusion,'' a
proposal by Hewlett-Packard Co. to increase high-tech investment in Third World
countries, ''as part of a long-term HP effort to find new revenues one, three,
five, and 10 years down the line.”
Business experts suggest that “economic development is the ultimate
solution to many of Africa's problems and that won't happen in countries that
lack a decent telecommunications infrastructure.” Bray’s article also discusses the impact of Internet technologies
on national and local politics in Ghana and other nations.
At this conference, Heaton and Odendaal (2001) will
discuss an exciting project to link coastal communities using the Internet in
Cape Province and Namibia. “The
Distance Learning and Information Sharing Tool (DLIST) is an interactive online
tool for disseminating relevant information. DLIST aims to improve integrated
planning and development processes by providing access to information that will
lead to a more equitable and sustainable future. DLIST is an ongoing pilot
project tailored specifically to improved management of the isolated coastal
areas of the Northern Cape Province and Southern Namibia” [ http://www.dlist.ws/ ]
.
Adekanmbi (1999), from the Centre for Continuing
Education, University of Botswana, predicts that “distance education will
continue to be used by a wider variety of clients, for a wider variety of
programmes” and “that a growing merger of ways between the field of distance
education and mainstream education is to be expected.” Within these changes, “the new media of
educational technology … must obviously find a berth in its practices.”
The
potential for online learning and teaching as a tool for individual and
national development for students in Africa and those studying about Africa is
clear. The future will require careful
planning, the reallocation of resources for new strategies, and greater
communications across nations.
References
Bray,
Hiawatha. Africa goes online Boston Globe. 7/22/2001, http://www.boston.com/globe/nation/packages/wiring_africa/
Frishberg, Manny. Gates: Poor Need Meds, not PCs. Wired News, October 19, 2001. http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,39461,00.html
Adekanmbi, Gbolagade (1999). A Glimpse into the Future of Distance Education
in Africa. http://www.ilce.edu.mx/icde_ilce/ponencia/viena/ponencia/p01298.htm
Heaton, Heather and Odendaal, Francois. Linking Coastal Communities to a Sustainable and Equitable
Future Via the Internet. A paper presentation at the Contemporary African
Issues conference at Eastern Connecticut State University, October 19, 2001.
International
Telecommunications Union (2001). ITU
Telecom Africa 2001: Bridging the digital divide conference overview. http://www.itu.int/AFRICA2001/exhibition/index.html
Kwankam, S. Yunkap and Ningo, N. Ntomambang (1997). Information
Technology in Africa: A Proactive Approach and the Prospects of Leapfrogging
Decades in the Development Process. http://www.isoc.org/isoc/whatis/conferences/inet/97/proceedings/B7/B7_1.HTM
Saint, W. (1999). Tertiary Distance Education and Technology in
Sub-Saharan Africa. The World Bank, Washington DC. http://www.adeanet.org/publications/wghe/tert_disted_en.pdf