Rural Mozambique

Focus on Africa

Over the last ten years the Sub-Saharan Commonwealth's capacity to deliver distance education has increased substantially. More than any other development agency, the Commonwealth of Learning has been instrumental in drawing the attention of member governments and their institutions to the application of distance and open learning to enhance access. Including Seychelles and Mauritius, there are 19 Commonwealth countries in Africa - all of them Sub-Saharan.

19 Commonwealth countries are located in Sub-Saharan Africa

Open and distance learning, coupled with the application of appropriate technologies, can play a central role in addressing needs in Africa. Every institution engaged in the development of the human being must be enabled to use distance and open learning. It may be the only means whereby education and training can be delivered, either for initial or replacement purposes, speedily, economically and effectively for large numbers of people.

This Focus on Africa highlights some of COL's current initiatives. For more details, please visit COL's web site. 

Teacher education

Teacher education is an integral component of the focus on basic education. Effective teachers are perhaps the most critical part of any strategy to meet the Education for All targets agreed to in Dakar. Yet shortages of trained teachers have been a chronic problem in much of the developing world, especially in Africa, and that problem is deepening with the decimation of the ranks of teachers by HIV/AIDS.

Recognising that new methods must be tried, and that they could not afford the luxury of taking untrained teachers from classrooms for professional upgrading, Ministers of Education from eight Southern African countries (Botswana, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe) collaborated with COL to develop distance education training materials to upgrade teachers of upper primary and junior secondary science, technology and mathematics in subject and general education areas (STAMP 2000+). Eighteen modules on general education courses were available in 2001 and 27 modules on science, technology and mathematics were completed in early 2002. More than 50 authors from throughout the region contributed to the material. Other countries will be encouraged to make use of these materials for their own teacher training needs.

A Pan-African Policy Dialogue on In-Service Teacher Training using Open and Distance Learning was convened and sponsored by COL in July 2001 and hosted by the Ministry of Basic Education, Sport and Culture, Namibia. Permanent Secretaries of Education and senior officials responsible for teacher training from African Commonwealth countries examined issues involving the accreditation of teachers, quality and standards, systems management and regional collaboration and co-operation. They also developed co-operative methods to move forward in implementing new strategies. The British Department for International Development, the Centre for British Teachers and other agencies provided funding assistance.

With the generous collaboration of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Republic of Singapore and the National Institute of Education in Singapore, COL provides an annual professional development opportunity for Directors and CEOs of teacher training institutes in Sub-Saharan Africa. Focussing on teacher training in recognition of its central importance to achieving the Education for All goal, the Institute has now provided training to 36 teacher training leaders from 15 countries.

Policy development and collaboration

COL has sponsored national forums on developing and/or revising national distance education policies in several countries and is an active member of the Association for the Development of Education in Africa (ADEA) working groups on teacher training and distance education.

Working with the South African Institute for Distance Education (SAIDE) and the Southern African Development Community (SADC), COL has developed an online course for distance education policy makers, designed to deepen the knowledge and skills of education managers responsible for open and distance learning. The course comprises web-based or CD-ROM-based training, augmented by a face-to-face workshop. Participants are from South Africa, Namibia, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Zambia, Swaziland and Seychelles.

Vice-chancellors

In 2000, COL initiated an annual Institute for African vice-chancellors entitled, "Managing Change - Leadership and Strategic Change in Higher Education: A strategic development programme for leaders of universities in Commonwealth Africa". The programme is hosted in partnership with the Association of Commonwealth Universities, the University of Abertay Dundee and the Association of African Universities. Fifty-eight senior administrators from 46 institutions based in 17 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa have now benefited from the three sessions held to date.

Institutional development

COL has provided technical assistance and advice in the establishment or restructuring of several African institutions, including the Botswana College of Distance and Open Learning, the National Teachers' Institute (Nigeria), the Open University of Tanzania and the Zimbabwe Open University.

Internships and attachments

COL has facilitated numerous attachments and study visits by educational leaders in Africa and sent Canadian youth interns to African organisations.

Community learning centres

Zambia is one of the beneficiaries of a COL literacy project that is funded by the British Department for International Development. The project is demonstrating the use of technology-based community learning centres to support literacy work with a focus on reading skills.

Low-cost media

Through COL's media empowerment programme (COLME), several community-operated applications of portable "briefcase" FM broadcasting stations and desk-top computer video production systems have been set up by COL to serve rural areas and to provide a model for implementation elsewhere. Community radio training focuses on use for health education (including HIV/AIDS) and supplementing primary education. Video applications support agricultural extension and peer health education.

Training laboratory technicians

A certificate training programme, delivered by distance, for laboratory technicians has been adapted for local use in Africa through a programme sponsored by COL and the Commonwealth Secretariat, in collaboration with the Commonwealth Association of Polytechnics in Africa. Polytechnics in Kenya and Uganda were the first to offer the programme.

Schoolnets

COL, through its Commonwealth Electronic Network for Schools and Education ( www.col.org/cense), and the new SchoolNetAfrica are collaborating in a Schoolnet Champions Capacity Building Project as well as three other areas: research, the development of SchoolNetAfrica's "knowledge warehouse" and a pilot programme on curriculum integration.

The organisations are organising ICTs in African Schools - A Workshop for Practitioners and Policymakers to be held in Botswana in April 2003.

Out-of-school secondary education, Mozambique

With funding from the British Department for International Development, COL and the Ministry of Education, Mozambique, are conducting a pilot project in out-of-school secondary education through distance education, providing opportunities for about 1000 teenagers in rural areas in Nampula province to resume their learning.

Nigeria

Government and education officials in Nigeria have consulted with COL to identify areas of support that the agency can provide for the country's ailing education system. Teacher training through open and distance learning, upgrading of distance education professionals and the re-establishment of the national open university have been identified as first priorities and work has begun. Among the initiatives is the awarding of 50 scholarships to Nigerian educators to enable them to pursue Masters of Distance Education studies through India's Indira Gandhi National Open University.

Collaboration with UNESCO

UNESCO's Regional Office for Education in Africa - better known by its French acronym, BREDA - and COL are conducting a joint programme for Sub-Saharan Africa, which focuses on open and distance learning (ODL) initiatives. The programme includes work in the areas of advocacy for open schooling, in-service teacher training for West Africa, recognition and transferability of higher education qualifications, non-formal health education through community radio and institutional staff training and development in ODL. COL is also assisting UNESCO with the development of a regional strategy in distance education.

Ministers attend COL Board meeting

The Honourable Professor Kader Asmal, Minister of Education, South Africa and the Honourable Professor Abraham Babalola Borishade, Minister of Education, Nigeria, met with COL's Board of Governors when they gathered in Durban prior to the second Pan-Commonwealth Forum on Open Learning.

Excerpts from Professor Borishade's remarks:

COL is clearly focussed on pursuing its mandate to serve as a fountain of solutions to the problems and challenges in the broad spectrum of open and distance learning in the Commonwealth countries. COL has served as a dependable facilitator of exchange of experience and expertise across the various countries through its offer of technical support in the development of institutional capacity in distance education, its ever-credible work in course development, research, publications and the construction of its readily accessible web site.

In Nigeria, this session, I received 1.3 million applications from qualified candidates for university education. In the 41 existing universities in the country, there are only 100,000 vacancies.

It has therefore become imperative for us to adopt open and distance learning to solve the enormous challenges of providing access to thousands of our citizens that are constantly excluded from access to education because of the limited provision of schools and facilities.

We recognise therefore that Nigeria must forge sustained partnership with the Commonwealth of Learning in our programmes to take full advantage of all the help we can get. Nigeria benefited from COL before the humiliating suspension of our country from the Commonwealth, which had a negative impact on the development of distance learning in Nigeria.

Professor Asmal noted:

The Commonwealth of Learning has played a leading role in the development of open, distance and technology enhanced learning in various Commonwealth countries. As the only international organisation dedicated to this cause, you are therefore centrally placed to support Governments and institutions and your success as a leading agency is evidenced by the immense recognition you have received for your work from various Commonwealth Ministers of Education. I trust that you will further build on your successes and advance open and distance learning in Africa, in the Commonwealth and globally.

For us as South Africans, the Board meeting and the second Pan-Commonwealth Forum on Open Learning comes at a very crucial time. We are in the process of restructuring our higher education system, so that it is able to meet our developmental needs and priorities. Given our shameful apartheid legacy, our higher education system, as it is currently configured, simply cannot respond adequately to the human resource development challenges that confront us.