eLearning Africa: Impatient Africans “Not Going To Wait Until 2063”

Press Release 

There is a mood of impatience among the ministers, businessmen and education experts attending this year’s eLearning Africa conference in Cairo. Aware of the opportunity offered by information and communication technologies to spread education, training and access to information throughout Africa, many are starting to feel that 2063, the date the African Union has set for the realisation of its vision of a ‘transformed continent’, may be too long to wait. They want Africans, and particularly young people, to feel the benefits, which the combination of technology and education can bring, within the next ten years.

“We are not going to wait until 2063,” Egypt’s Minister of Communications and Information Technology, H.E. Yasser ElKady, told the conference’s opening session yesterday (Tuesday) evening.

And one of Africa’s leading intellectuals, Professor Ismail Serageldin, the founder and Director of the Bioblioteca Alexandrina, said:

“It’s the dawn of a new age! Let’s embrace it. There is so much we can do for a new generation and for the whole world… We cannot let the gap between us and the advanced nations continue to grow. We must translate rhetoric into action. Rhetoric, declarations, plans and targets are not equal to action.”

Experts at the conference agree that failure to accelerate the pace of change could have devastating consequences for Africa.  

“There is a widespread awareness among educators, politicians and businessmen that we really have to move quickly now,” says Charles Senkondo, Executive Director of Tanzania’s Global Learning Agency. “We’re all aware that Africa is a young continent and that soon the majority of our population will be under the age of 24. We can’t afford to leave the future of 200 million young Africans to chance. Unless we invest heavily in education and training, and ensure that our young people are fully equipped to compete in the digital age, we will store up some very serious social problems for ourselves and our neighbours.”  

 The view was echoed by Toyosi Akerele-Ogunsiji, founder of RISE Networks and a leading social entrepreneur, who addressed the conference this morning (Wednesday)
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“56 million Africans aged 15 / 24 haven’t completed primary education…,” she said. “The more uneducated children Africa has, the more prisons we’ll have to build.”

Africa’s Vision For Education And How It Will Become Reality

 
More than 1200 international education and technology experts, advisers and investors will gather in Cairo in May to discuss how to turn the African Union’s vision of a “transformed continent” into reality. They will look at how developments in technology could enable education and training to boost growth and transform the lives and prospects of the next generation of Africans. The programme for the conference, which is published online today is available at www.elearning-africa.com.

“New opportunities for expanding education and training are being created across Africa,” says Rebecca Stromeyer, the founder of eLearning Africa. “Everywhere, in every sector, technology is transforming the nature of learning, opening it up and creating new opportunities in both education and training. This is an extraordinarily exciting time for education everywhere. In Africa, the opportunity to create a massive transformation in the lives and prospects of tens of millions of people is enormous.

 
“The change is already happening. Technology is helping people to learn new skills and in many sectors, such as farming, it is beginning to make a huge difference. Technology-assisted learning has begun to make a significant contribution to economic growth in many countries. The pace of change is only going to quicken over the next decade and the effect will be astonishing. We really are going to see a new Africa, a transformed Africa.

 
“Education is at the heart of this change. eLearning Africa this year is all about a vision of Africa’s future and how we can make it happen. The African Union has set out its 2063 Vision but how can we turn it into reality? At the conference, we’ll be looking at what’s going on in both education and technology and how these developments can contribute to positive change and growth. It’ll be a very practical conference, featuring hundreds of presentations, proposals, products and solutions from experts and investors from all over the world.”

 
Themes up for discussion at the conference include the workplace skills of the future; changes in the nature and ownership of learning; improving access and creating new opportunities for students, teachers and trainers; innovation, emerging technologies; higher and further education; and the shape of African education institutions in the future.