Educational technology in sub-Saharan Africa
Since the 1960s, various information and communication technologies have aroused strong interest in sub-Saharan Africa as a way of increasing access to education, and enhancing its quality and fairness.
The radio broadcasts were therefore mainly focused on primary teachers' needs so as to improve their teaching techniques, and on subjects that were considered as priorities for the pupils: French, arithmetic and science.
The Programme for Education by Television (PETV) was made the responsibility of UNESCO, assisted by cooperation from Belgium, France and the Ford Foundation.
Many schools in the region lack reliable electricity, internet connectivity, and safe storage facilities for the laptops, which hinder the effective use of the devices.
However, ongoing technical support and maintenance were often lacking, as local technicians frequently did not have the necessary training or resources to repair the laptops, resulting in many devices becoming unusable over time.
Some other proposed cost-benefit ratios for other aid programs seeking to improve educational and socioeconomic conditions include:[3] Many of these low-cost programs have sought to specifically increase the access to education for women in hopes of increase literacy, equality in pay, economic viability, better productivity, more democratic and responsive political institutions, and better overall public health.
Though it has a smaller presence in sub-Saharan Africa than the OLPC project, Classmate PC has enabled laptop computers to be delivered to primary schools in the Seychelles and Kenya, particularly in rural areas.
[6][7] Some criticisms of TESSA OERs cited by teachers include lack of relevance of curriculum materials and existing satisfaction with current resources.
Positioned as an avenue to move millions of individuals out of poverty in developing regions, few reports on experiments of such practices have demonstrated success of ICT4D on the standard of living in Africa.
[10] Android penetration is the highest due to easy integration of social innovation tools in areas of e-health, e-learning, waste management, mobile banking, etc., and phones are the preferred way for many to access the internet.
"[10]The success or failure of ICTs in Sub-Saharan Africa is highly dependent on and challenged by regional problems such as food and water shortage, pandemic diseases, wars, or heritage loss.
[8] In terms of research initiatives that pertain to educational technology, one important use case is e-Learning, where the issue of penetration results from its targets.
[17] Educational limiting factors include teachers' literacy rates, access to professional development, and missing unified national policy on computer use in schools.
[1] The Agence universitaire de la Francophonie (AUF) has also, since 1999, set up around forty French-speaking digital campuses, more than half of them in Africa.
In these infrastructures, dedicated to technology and set up within the universities, the AUF offers access to over 80 first and master's degrees entirely by distance learning, about 30 of which are awarded by African institutions and created with its support.
The African universities are taking a growing interest in this new method of learning, especially in view of the ever-increasing demand for higher education at a time when the continent is experiencing a deficit in qualified teachers.
The American NGO WorldReader has set itself the goal of extending access to reading to the most underprivileged children by distributing readers designed by Amazon.
Moreover, the report published by USAID following the iRead impact study in Ghana of 337 pupils in six different schools in 2010–2011 shows a number of positive aspects of the use of readers.
The pupils using Kindles proved to be more enthusiastic about reading, which allowed them to improve their technical skills and achieve better scores in the standardized tests.
[1] Old and outdated traditional computer hardware and the costs of maintenance have prompted those devising projects to turn to technologies that are cheaper to buy and easier to handle.
Relatively cheap compared to the laptop computer and more flexible in its uses, tablets have the potential to provide an efficient response to part of the educational needs of sub-Saharan Africa.
