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CAFOR Project on the Digital Schools Initiative

CAFOR will work with international and national partners in Africa to equip African youths with digital skills using Information and Communication Technology. This will promote access to ICT in education among school-going-age children on the continent. The project will advocate for effective, relevant policies integrating information and communication technology (ICT) that will drive and strategically accelerate the transformation of education and training systems for young Africans as powerful instruments for producing the human capital that Africa needs for its sustainable development.

Africa has a mass of knowledge and innovative practices that can inspire other initiatives and inform ICT integration policies. The relevance and effectiveness of policies on integrating ICT in education and training in Africa would depend on these policies’ capacity to move the levers of change. These would entail using strategic and operational planning to integrate ICT in education and training in Africa; education of the personnel that constitutes the main vectors of change: administrators, inspectors, teachers, and trainers; and the availability of digital resources.

CAFOR will partner with organizations and institutions working to promote ICT in education to develop an understanding and build a shared vision of how ICT can be relevant and useful in improving accessibility and quality in African education and training systems. The fullest integration of ICT is crucial in enabling the paradigm shift needed to transform education and training systems that would support the acquisition of critical knowledge, skills, and qualifications for accelerated and sustainable development in Africa. CAFOR will support African countries through its regional initiatives in developing national policies and action plans that will help integrate ICT into their education and training systems.

CAFOR will support ongoing dialogue that will bring together decision-makers from African Education Ministries and representatives of development bodies, the private ICT sector, and civil society. This platform is indispensable to give the various stakeholders a shared understanding of ICT’s opportunities, the policies and strategies needed for the efficient use of ICT by education and training systems, and the paradigm shifts required for the successful integration of ICT.

CAFOR will partner with other organizations to review lessons drawn from countries that have reached different phases of ICT integration in education and training; the formulation, financing, implementation, and monitoring of ICT policies; ICT as a contributor to teachers’ professional development and improvement in teaching practices; the development and sharing of digital content; the deployment of ICT hardware and connectivity issues; challenges in scaling up ICT integration practices; learning opportunities via cell phones; the use of ICT to expand learning opportunities for marginalized population groups; and public-private partnerships for ICT in education. Other varying challenges will include teacher training, curriculum content that would match skills with jobs to students’ information, communication, and technology (ICT) skills, technical and vocational education, and training (TVET), and physically bringing technology into the classroom and use it also outside the school to ensure that complete quality learning takes place.

Given the relevance and exigencies of the use of ICT in education and training now more than ever before, and as consistent with promoting science, technology, and innovation on the continent with the provision of educational access to every African citizen, CAFOR will advocate for African governments to, as of now invest in e-learning and m-learning initiatives. CAFOR will also partner with other stakeholders in the field to provide capacity building, technical and strategic support in AU member states seeking to harness the potential of ICT to increase access to and improve quality, equity, and effectiveness of education, particularly with science, mathematics, and ICT subjects to help address the low numbers progressing to university to study STEM courses. CAFOR will also seek to adopt a model that will be consistent with CESA 16-25 and which would transform education through the use of digital technology and 21st-century level skills for teachers and students’ innovative practices in a way that is responsive to the needs of the market place and the emerging knowledge economies and societies.

Through this Digital Schools Initiative programme, young Africans will now envision how they will embark on promising careers using new skills acquired with the support of ICTs. E-learning initiatives on the continent such as Open and Distance Learning can help actors, musicians, and storytellers to make a good living. Many other best practices need to be identified, articulated, documented, and publicized. These include ongoing initiatives in Africa that involve self-employment and entrepreneurship in both the formal and informal sectors, linking informal sector activities with the digital economy, and further linking these to an integrated strategy that governments and the private sector should deliver, and with the support of NGOs and international agencies.

CAFOR will implement this project for four years at USD 4.0 million

CAFOR is urging all its partners and stakeholders to ensure that governments and African institutions pay more attention to the digitization of quality education through this initiative and invest more and better in education.

To download the PDF version, please click on (https://cafor.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/2-Digital-Schools-Initiative-Project.pdf )