Narrowing Africa’s Digital Divide in Education

A Corporation-supported educational technology network has become a valued resource for higher education professionals in Africa during the COVID-19 crisis — and beyond

By Wachira Kigotho April 29, 2021

Carnegie Reporter Spring 2021 African Academics

From the Spring 2021 Carnegie Reporter

Words Matter This word cloud draws from the titles of all of e/merge Africa’s online professional development events in 2020. Credit: E/merge Africa

Nothing in the history of mankind has caused such widespread disruption in the global education sector as the COVID-19 pandemic, which led to the closure of educational institutions at all levels and affected the learning progress of about 1.6 billion learners — representing 94 percent of the world’s student population.

Most governments urged teachers to move to online digital platforms to facilitate continuity in learning, but the situation was quite different in Africa, especially in rural areas of sub-Saharan Africa, where there is minimal Internet connectivity and both electricity and digital devices are rare. Furthermore, even when adequate Internet infrastructure and digital teaching platforms are in place, most teachers, even at the university level, lack basic digital skills.

Enter e/merge Africa, an educational technology network supported by Carnegie Corporation of New York that has become a valued resource for higher education in Africa during the COVID-19 crisis — and beyond.

Embedded at the Centre for Innovation in Learning and Teaching (CILT) at the University of Cape Town (UCT) in South Africa, e/merge Africa has been developing, training, and networking the next generation of Africa’s educational technology professionals since 2014.

The history of the Corporation’s support for the training of educational technology professionals at the University of Cape Town began in 2012, when the Corporation’s board of trustees approved an initial grant of $1.5 million supporting the development of a postgraduate diploma in educational technology to create an accredited UCT program for practitioners, and the establishment of an African e-learning network. “The grant has continued to support the training program in educational technology at the University of Cape Town, as well as funding e/merge Africa’s professional development network across the continent for five years,” says Tony Carr, founder of e/merge Africa and senior lecturer in CILT. In addition to providing learning experiences, the project aimed to expand professional networks and partnerships in the field of educational technology in African universities.

Between 2014 and 2020, the grant provided scholarships to 53 students to study for the postgraduate diploma course in educational technology. According to datasets from CILT, most of the scholarships were granted to students from Botswana, Egypt, Eswatini, Ghana, Kenya, Lesotho, Namibia, Nigeria, South Africa, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. Carr points out that the Corporation grant has also spurred an increase in the enrollment of students in educational technology who are being supported either by their employers or through self-sponsorship.

In recent years, most of the marketing of the postgraduate diploma and master’s degree in educational technology has been through the e/merge Africa professional development network or through the African networks at CILT. “The reputation of the program and the availability of scholarships have been strong attraction points for the applicants,” Carr explains.

Alice Barlow-Zambodla, e/merge Africa’s research support convenor, describes the Corporation’s efforts in developing African professionals in educational technology as “an act of lighting fires” in the African higher education landscape that has been too long in the waiting. An expert in educational technology, Barlow-Zambodla, who leads a research support collaboration with the Association for Educational Communications and Technology (AECT), said there is a pressing need to integrate educational technology into teachers’ curriculum at all levels.

“It is not a choice to have educational technology professionals in our education systems — but a reality that has dawned on us in Africa is that we should be making conscious educational decisions to find solutions to overcome learning challenges — and not just during a pandemic,” says Barlow-Zambodla.

The University of Cape Town has been offering openings to African universities that would like to upgrade the capacity of their teaching professionals by supporting them through scholarships. According to Carr, since 2007 Uganda’s Makerere University has sent more of its staff for postgraduate training in educational technology at UCT than any other university.

From 2014 to 2020, 17 educational technologists and lecturers from Makerere signed up for and completed the postgraduate diploma in educational technology at the University of Cape Town. Eight of them received Corporation-supported scholarships. “Makerere has been able to improve its training in educational technology, research, and funding partnerships, and in 2018 it was able to launch its own master’s program in instructional design and technology,” says Carr.

In another positive development, the e/merge Africa network has enjoyed success in assisting and connecting educational technology professionals in African universities, even though in the larger context the numbers are relatively small. (According to the Association of African Universities, there are more than 1,225 officially recognized universities in the continent.)

From the beginning, e/merge Africa has offered online professional development activities that focus on educational technology practitioners and researchers in the African higher education system. According to Carr, whereas network membership includes colleagues from government, private and nongovernmental organizations, and experts from outside of Africa, e/merge Africa’s leadership and core members come from African universities. Network activities include webinars, online workshops, periodic online conferences, and support and mentorship of members who are doing research on the use of technology in African higher education.

Here are some figures: in 2020, 1,145 active members of e/merge Africa attended 22 events conducted in English and 19 events held in Arabic, and they came from 59 countries with 26 African countries represented. The seven countries with the highest number of active members in 2020 were Egypt (254), South Africa (232), Saudi Arabia (136), Kenya (97), Nigeria (77), Zimbabwe (39), and Ghana (24).

As part of efforts to attract even more teaching personnel, the e/merge Africa network is preparing to launch a new open license online course that will integrate the pedagogical and technological knowledge required by lecturers who are getting ready to teach online. The new e-Learning Basics course is an open resource collaboration between Eduardo Mondlane University in Mozambique, CILT, the Association of African Universities, and e/merge Africa. For now, the flagship course taught by e/merge Africa is its eight-week Facilitating Online course. According to the organizers, with the rapid shift to remote learning after the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, this online short course has been increasingly accepted as an essential and effective online teaching and training resource in African universities and has also attracted participants from the training sector. (In 2020, the course attracted 172 participants with 128 certificates achieved.)

Most significant has been the development of e/merge Africa Arabic, which opened the door for online teaching in languages other than English. According to Mohamed Ahmed, a senior instructional designer at Mansoura University in Egypt and the coordinator of e/merge Africa Arabic, the Arabic language events were piloted in 2018. e/merge Africa now has members in universities across North Africa and the Middle East — where Arabic is one of the languages of instruction. “The concept is good as there is no other organization today that is offering this kind of educational professional development to university lecturers in Arabic,” notes Ahmed.

To date, e/merge Africa Arabic has relationships in 22 universities in Egypt in addition to Mansoura, including Ain-Shams University, Al-Azhar University, Alexandria University, the American University in Cairo, Aswan University, Cairo University, and Suez Canal University. Ahmed is quite optimistic that as time goes on, e/merge Africa will develop similar offerings in other languages that are widely spoken in the continent.

Since the foundational 2012 grant that gave rise to e/merge Africa, Carnegie Corporation of New York has continued to steadfastly support the initiative. In 2018, the Corporation approved another grant of $350,000 to continue the work of improving the capabilities of educational technology practitioners and researchers in African universities. Some of the developments coming out of this philanthropy include e/merge Africa Arabic language events, research support activities, and the development of the e-Learning Basics course.

Although access to educational technology services is still low in most African countries, e/merge Africa, thanks to the Corporation’s support, has been opening opportunities for inclusive learning by exposing new concepts, practices, and tools to lecturers and teachers. As Barlow-Zambodla points out, building on these experiences and successes is one way of narrowing Africa’s digital divide in education.

Wachira Kigotho, a former senior information officer with the Government of Kenya, is a journalist based in Nairobi.

TOP: Members of e/merge Africa’s leadership team take a break to pose for a group portrait during a planning meeting in Cape Town in 2019. (l–r) Gabriel Konayuma (Zambia); Jerome Dooga (Nigeria); Irene Maweu (Kenya); Nicola Pallitt (South Africa); Cath Fortune (South Africa); Alice Barlow-Zambodla (South Africa); and Mohamed Ahmed (Egypt). Credit: E/merge Africa