Growth+of+online+courses+in+Africa

Education and e-learning in Africa need to be seen within the context of enormous poverty, lack of infrastructure and a huge demand for education. Approximately 90 million people in western and middle Africa live in rural areas and one in five of those live in countries involved in conflict. Poverty and AIDS result in one child dying every three seconds and clean water is not available to more than a billion people (Beasley, 2009).

Against this backdrop, education is seen as instrumental in combating poverty.

//[|(Africa: Tracking Internet Progress] is a resource which links to many video clips detailing ICT development in Africa. //

Africa is not homogeneous. Countries differ in national ICT policies, infrastructure, conflicts, economic status and authoritarianism. The very northern and far southern countries have more resources when it comes to ICT: North Africa because it is closer to Europe and has high bandwidth connectivity and South Africa because its economy is more mature. Some countries experience substantial instability and conflict which makes the use of ICT for educational purposes an impossibility. However, despite the challenges, there are many African countries which are trying to implement ICTs to help economic and social development (Farrell & Isaacs, 2007).

In many of these African countries there is a growing push to provide students with the skills and knowledge they need to participate in the developing global knowledge market. Policy makers are also showing an interest in using online technology to meet the Education for All objectives identified at the World Education Forum in Dakar in 2000. In a 2007 survey of African countries' ICT use in education, 53 had developed, or were developing ICT policies and at least half of the countries had developed ICT policies specific to education. The importance of these policies is that they provide the opportunity for private and international organisations to be involved in educational partnerships and sponsorship (Farrell & Isaacs, 2007).

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E-learning in Africa is perceived to be more cost effective than traditional education and as a way to cope with the huge demands. Other perceived advantages are providing student flexibility, enabling distance students opportunities to study, creating repositories of information, improving student success through more feedback and contact with tutors and creating international networks. Educational institutions hope that e-learning demand will provide leverage for better and more sustainable national ICT infrastructure (Uys, Nleya, & Molelu, 2004). E-learning is also thought of as more progressive, that it will reduce the number of students leaving to study in other countries, that it enables people in full time work or with responsibilities in the home to study and that it will help with economic and social development (Wright, Dhanarajan & Reju, 2009).

Additionally a large variety of other digital technologies are also being used in Africa. The findings below are from a survey of 413 people involved in e-learning in Africa across 42 countries and provide a snapshot of ICT use in Africa in 2013 (Isaacs, Hollow, Akoh & Harper-Merrett, 2013).



//Isaacs S, Hollow D, Akoh B, and Harper-Merrett T., 2013 Findings from the eLearning Africa Survey 2013., in Isaacs S (ed) 2013. The eLearning Africa Report, ICWE: Germany. Creative Commons License (Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs)//

Education issues in Africa