Experts Divulged: African Nations should brace up for Digital Technology in the Education Sector to Expedite Africa’s Financial Growth and Quality Education

By Abdul Rahman Bangura-

NEW AFRICA DAILY NEWS (NADN) Freetown, Sierra Leone– Lecturing at the African EduTech Conference 2024 in Abuja themed ‘Building on Effective African EdTech Ecosystem for Global Impact’, the experts referenced from across Africa, retained that integration of technology into the education system was a strategic move with huge capacity to enable teaching and learning, improve accessibility, and prepare the continent’s future workforce for the needs of the digital age.

Executive Director – Centre for National Distance Learning and Open Schooling (CENDLOS), Ghana, Nana Gyamfi Adwabour, noted it had become imperative for the African continent to explore ways of expanding what he described as the mindset revolution of children, in order to assure students to begin to think as innovators as opposed to consumers.

Adwabour underscoring the essence for the African continent to catapult from theory based education system to practical, emphasized that, with digital solutions, Africa could secure a brighter future for its citizens through increased competitiveness and development of a skilled and adaptable workforce.

He noted: “At first, most African countries were using objective based. That is more teachers dominant, making kids very docile. In Ghana, we have standard based curriculum which makes kids explore to do more project based learning and experimentation. We have infused into them that if you fail, it is part of the process.

“I know Nigeria is on the right path just like other African countries. I believe there has to be a lot of studies and research at every point. “I will suggest to my brothers and sisters in Nigeria that at any stage, you do what we call implementation research. Even though you think your education is going well, still do research to see your weaknesses, supported with data.”

Adwabour who commended the Nigerian government for infusing digital skills into its new curriculum for basic schools, charged other African countries to follow same path, even as he added that CENDLOS, an agency under the Ministry of Education in Ghana, was charged with the mandate of infusing Information Communication Technology (ICT) into education.

“The new curriculum is good. To develop in any African country, Technical Vocational Educational Training (TVET) has to be improved. That is how employability can come.

“The kids should be creators to employ themselves. Other African countries should emulate that. Before you can do that, your curriculum has to support. It has to be standard based. So I applaud Nigeria for doing that.”

Harping on the importance of collaborative continental research, the Ghanian official noted that with most countries in Africa struggling with same issues, connectivity, content and capacity building remain key in learning best practices from each other within the continent.

Manager, Korea International Cooperation Agency (KOICA), Nigeria office, David Nkwa, exhorted countries in Africa to commit to an upscale deployment of inclusive technologies in schools and ensure their acceptance and adoption amongst teachers, parents, and “African countries can upscale technology in our schools when it becomes accepted and adopted by the users. Because one thing is to deploy technology in schools, another thing is for the teachers and users to adopt it.

“So one of the things that we have done as donor agencies when we carry out various EduTech projects, Smart Schools projects in Nigeria is that we make sure we carry all stakeholders along, especially the teachers, parents and community leaders. We make sure that they are part of the whole process, ecosystem of the technology we are deploying.

“We make them participate while deploying those technology. That way, once they accept it, it becomes easier for them to adopt it. “And we can scale it up to other neighbouring communities and states. First of all, make sure that it is something that can be accepted and once it is accepted, it is easier to scale to other places.”

New Africa Daily News Abdul Rahman Bangura Reports, Africa Correspondent