Online Education and Africa
The Internet is different things to different people. E-mail is by far the most popular use of the Internet, and set to remain so for the foreseeable future. According to the research firm, IDC, the number of person-to-person e-mail messages will grow at a compound rate of 138% to reach 1.2 billion in 2005. Despite the impressive growth in the use of e-mail, there are other important uses of the Internet in traditional areas such as e-commerce and education. According to the research firm Edventures, the e-education market will increase from $4.5 billion last year to $11 billion by 2005. Online education represents the marriage of the Internet to age-old distance (sometimes called “correspondence”) education. Thus, online education offers the benefits of distance education, and more. Perhaps the greatest advantages of distance education include increased access of education, and reduced costs of providing it. While traditional distance education relies on regular (or “snail”) mail to deliver course materials and examinations, online education provides for much faster and cheaper e-mail- and Web-based instruction, communication, and evaluation. In the same vein, the fact that Web-based courses can be accessed by more people in far-flung places (in contrast to radio and TV-programs) makes them even more attractive.
Online Education and Africa
Africans, too, can benefit greatly from online education
By Katim S. Touray
March 14, 2002
The Internet is different things to different people. E-mail is by far the most popular use of the Internet, and set to remain so for the foreseeable future. According to the research firm, IDC, the number of person-to-person e-mail messages will grow at a compound rate of 138% to reach 1.2 billion in 2005. Despite the impressive growth in the use of e-mail, there are other important uses of the Internet in traditional areas such as e-commerce and education. According to the research firm Edventures, the e-education market will increase from $4.5 billion last year to $11 billion by 2005.
Online education represents the marriage of the Internet to age-old distance (sometimes called “correspondence”) education. Thus, online education offers the benefits of distance education, and more. Perhaps the greatest advantages of distance education include increased access of education, and reduced costs of providing it. While traditional distance education relies on regular (or “snail”) mail to deliver course materials and examinations, online education provides for much faster and cheaper e-mail- and Web-based instruction, communication, and evaluation. In the same vein, the fact that Web-based courses can be accessed by more people in far-flung places (in contrast to radio and TV-programs) makes them even more attractive.
A major initiative to bring online education to sub-Saharan Africa, is African Virtual University (AVU), which provides distance education courses on subjects ranging from business to computer programming, engineering, journalism, and science. AVU (http://www.avu.org) uses not only online tools such as chat, email, and discussion boards, but also satellite-delivered video and audio feeds to learning centers across Africa. AVU has partner institutions in both Africa, the US, Canada, and Europe. A total of 30 institutions in 17 African countries participate in AVU, thus enabling their students to receive lectures from institutions such as Howard University in the US, and Univeristé Libre de Bruxelles in Belgium. There is no doubt that many of the courses would not have been available to African students were it not for the Web-enabled distance education.
Besides AVU, there are other national and international organizations promoting distance education in Africa. The Ethiopian Distance Education Association and the African Distance Learning Association (ADLA - http://www.physics.ncat.edu/~michael/adla), for example, all promote distance education in Africa. Furthermore, it is likely that African distance education institutions such as the University of Swaziland’s Institute for Distance Education, and Tanzania’s Open University will in the near future use the Internet to deliver courses online.
Given the increasing popularity of the Internet in Africa, and the ever-present and growing need for more educated Africans, it is reasonable to expect that Africa can also benefit greatly from increased use of online education. In particular, Africa stands to save a lot of money by using online education more, given that many Africans still travel overseas for short courses that are especially suited to online delivery.
Another potential benefit of online education to Africans is that it can provide African institutions with a new source of revenue from international students. Such revenue will be welcome given that it will be in much-needed foreign currency. Despite the potential for earning foreign exchange from online education programs, very few African institutions tap the opportunity. Thus, only one African institution provides courses for delivery by AVU, in contrast to the 30 that only receive courses. With the US online higher education market projected to reach $7 billion next year (according to Cisco Systems), African institutions will benefit greatly from providing online courses on, for example, African languages, history, and culture to American students.
The fact that online education is generally cheaper than traditional classroom education means that it can also provide a lot of Africans with affordable education. Unfortunately, the potential for online education to provide Africans with increased access to education is hampered by lack of Internet access in Africa. For this reason, Internet access in Africa should be increased, and community-based Internet cafes launched to support online education. This way, people who do not have computers and/or Internet access can access online courses that would otherwise have been beyond their reach.
As can be expected, online education also suffers from some of the problems that plague traditional distance education programs. Chief among these problems is the fact that there are many dubious distance education providers out there. Fortunately numerous organizations and agencies provide information about the accreditation of online education providers. For example, the US Distance Learning Association (http://www.usdla.org/) provides information about accreditation of distance education providers in the US. Other organizations providing valuable information on distance and online education include Commonwealth of Learning (http://www.col.org), and the World Bank (http://www1.worldbank.org/disted/).
Despite some of the pitfalls associated with distance and online education, there is no doubt that properly harnessed, the Internet can be valuable in providing Africans with improved and increased access to education. Given the present trend toward increased Internet use in Africa, it can only be expected that in the future more and more Africans will benefit from online education.
* Katim S. Touray, Ph.D. is a Gambian Internet, Media, and Agriculture consultant based in The Gambia