According to ECA consultant
on National Information and Communication Infrastructure
(NICI) policies, Prof. Clement Dzidonu, "African universities
risk the danger of loosing their revenue base if they don't
adopt e-learning strategies and catch up".
In a presentation during a session entitled,
'Meeting the Challenge of Adopting ICT in African Universities',
chaired by ECA during the first official day of the e-Learning
Africa conference, Prof. Dzidonu who is also the founder
of the Global Village University, added "foreign universities
are introducing better, varied and relevant courses through
e-learning that are much cheaper than those offered at home
and they will draw African students away, causing a major
crisis for the revenue base of publicly run African universities".
However, there are some African countries
that are forging ahead with the introduction of an e-learning
culture in their universities, based on national ICT strategies
and education policies.
In a presentation by Maggy Beukes-Amiss,
coordinator of the University of Namibia's e-learning centre,
said "Namibia is proud of the establishment of an e-Learning
Centre (eLC) that is a multi-stakeholder centre to host
all e-activities of all educational institutions in the
country on one common Learning Management System under the
auspices of Namibian Open Learning Network Trust (NOLNet).
The stakeholders include NAMCOL, the Polytechnic of Namibia,
the University of Namibia, the National Institute for Educational
Development (NIED) and the Ministries of Basic Education
and Higher Education.
She reiterated, "this initiative stems
from the Namibian ICT for Education Policy that is also
derived from the national ICT policy, and is therefore in
tune with the aspirations of the country".
Speaking at the same session, Prof. Amos
Thapiso of the University of Botswana, said "eLearning
at the University was aimed at advancing student-oriented,
active, open, collaborative and life-long teaching-learning
processes as a result of an aggressive strategy for technological
transformation over the last two years".
He further added, "the e-learning Support
Centre has been used to train more than 30% of the academic
community of 680 staff in various educational technologies
using more than 60 targeted workshops. Additionally, there
is a dramatic increase in the use and demand by students
for access to the Internet and specifically the World Wide
Web".
The University of Cape Town has a similar
e-learning initative, however, one of its lecturers Tony
Carr said that there were no incentives offered to University
staff who undertook e-learning activities, stating, "there
was need for curriculum support structures for e-learning
as well as champions and leadership by educators".
However, Prof. Dzidonu emphasized the stark
realities facing many other universities on the continent
in terms of free acess to connectivity by students. Referring
to ECA's SCAN ICT project, he said, "there were only
2% of students in Ghana, for instance that had free access
to computers and the Internet with a computer-student ratio
being around 100." This, he stressed left little room
for e-learning to thrive and "strong government intervention
offering investment in the area of e-learning was needed".
