Kenya gets an opportunity to examine its achievements in the information and communication technology industry when it hosts an e-learning conference this week.
The conference, e-Learning Africa, will provide a forum for the country’s ICT professionals to share ideas and experiences on e-learning.
The theme, “Building Infrastructures and Capacities to Reach out to the Whole of Africa,” reflects the efforts of African countries to set up national and regional ICT infrastructures to provide access to education, training and service.
According to Minister of Education, George Saitoti, ICT can greatly supplement traditional methods of curriculum delivery, particularly in the middle-level colleges and universities.
The event seeks to link a network of decision makers from governments with universities, schools, training providers, industry, and other players in development co-operation.
The focus will be on ICT-supported education, a core component of the development plans of most African governments. Currently, many governments are integrating ICT into their educational systems with the aim of attaining the Millennium Goal of “Education for All.”
This will be emphasised through a wide range of topics such as e-learning in medical education and the fight against HIV/Aids; mobile learning; open source and open content; as well as e-learning in schools, higher education institutions, and in the public sector.
The initiative also seeks to reverse a trend whereby very few African countries participate in international e-learning conferences such as On-line Educa Berlin, the largest e-learning conference in the world, held in Berlin every year for the past 14 years.
The event will include public e-lectures at Mombasa Polytechnic and Maseno University on e-learning as well as research and development topics in technology-enhanced education and training. There will also be two workshops – one each for Mombasa and Kisumu – addressing the needs of rural areas and regional institutions.
Prof Saitoti said the conference is significant to Kenya because it comes at a time when the government has formulated a national ICT policy.
The project manager of the conference, Rebecca Stromeyer, says more than 1,200 participants from 81 countries are expected. Most will come from Kenya, followed by Nigeria, South Africa and Uganda. From Europe, the United Kingdom will have the largest contingent. Canada and the USA are also represented.
Unesco, the International Centre for Technical and Vocational Education Training, the Global Development Learning Network, and the World Bank, as well as national and governmental institutions from all over the world will be represented.
Universities from Africa, including the University of Ibadan, Nigeria, the African Virtual University, University of Zimbabwe, Tumaini University, Tanzania, and the University of the Western Cape, South Africa, are currently presenting ICT good practice and e-learning programmes in their curricula.
E-Learning Africa is an annual conference organised by ICWE GmbH and Hoffmann & Reif. Each year, a different African country will serve as the venue. The first conference was held last year in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
Source: East African
