Africa must reposition for digital education

By Ollus Ndhomu

The emergence of COVID-19 has popularized digital education in the whole wide world. Simply defined as a resourceful use of digital technologies and tools for teaching and learning purposes, digital education is no longer optional in this new COVID-19 dispensation. Classrooms have become synonymous with the words Google Meet, Zoom, MS Teams, and webinars.

With the ever-evolving pandemic raging around the world, it is now a new normal to host online meetings, training sessions, social events, and empowerment activities. Prior to the outbreak of COVID-19, the use of online platforms for learning and teaching, job interviews and meetings, was something rare in Africa for obvious reasons. In South Africa for example, the blended learning approach has existed for over five years now but face-to-face learning was a common preference among students, lecturers, and instructors in general. This is not unique to South Africa alone given the ubiquitous historic gaps in education and language barriers which curse almost every nation around the world’s second-largest continent.

However, the prevailing public health emergency and lack of adequate university infrastructure to meet the dynamic learning needs of large classes, have rendered online education a more suitable option. A critical look into the future through the prism of technology shows that digitalization of learning and teaching is an inevitable newfound focus of education. McKinsey surveys in 2019 and 2020 forecasted a predominantly individual classroom experience by 2030 with replete collaborative platforms that would enable individuals to study from any location.

This is a new reality slowly unfolding everywhere with mushrooming gamified learning experiences, gig economies, and virtual workspaces. It is however difficult to measure Africa’s preparedness for this shift in education, which is part of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR). While other continents gear up for a 2030 4IR classroom, Africa is grappling with educational inequalities, limited funding, teacher-pupil ratio, and a waning teacher confidence. Take for example Zambia; a country with over sixty thousand unemployed teacher graduates, but still having classes of about 70 pupils with government-employed teachers earning an average monthly salary estimated at $200. 

In South Africa, more than 1.4 million youths aged 18-24 meet the requirements of attending tertiary education but are unable to due to the lack of funds (Statistics SA). One cannot help but question: is the future of education in Africa digital?

Challenges of a fully online education in Africa are associated with the socio-economic backgrounds of the majority of students. Majority of students lack access to infrastructure, which includes digital hardware, library resources, and the most important of all, data connectivity. In Mozambique for example, less than 40% of the entire population has access to the internet; and the situation is not different for Malawi, Chad, Sudan, and DR Congo among other war-torn countries.

African governments should place highly on increasing internet accessibility, building technology-sensitive infrastructure, and rural electrification to ready the continent for the 2030 4IR classroom. Without doubt, technology has set itself as a means and product of education.