The New Partnership for Africa's Development E-School Program is included as a means to provide ICT equipment such as computers and internet access to all schools in member nations within
The New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD) program.
NEPAD parents the E-School Program and is an economic program that aims to bring economic and social development to African nations and ensure 'Africa's Renewal'.
The E-School Program began with Demonstration Projects and has developed further yet remains a work in progress in many countries, facing both criticism and support.
Origins and goals
The E-School program was developed in 2003 at the African Economic Summit. The project aims to provide computers, internet access, and other
Information and Communication Technology (ICT) to all schools in Africa within 10 years, under the NEPAD agreement.
The main goal of the program is to expand students' ability to learn in schools through internet connection and technology access. The aim is to cover all high schools within 5 years of the start of implementation and all primary schools within 10 years, a total of some 600,000 schools. This is an initiative to provide more equality and access to education across African schools. The program does this by bringing techniques used elsewhere, ICT, to provide more academic opportunities for African children to succeed. NEPAD schools are unique from non-NEPAD schools in that they have significantly higher integration of ICTs, allowing children more opportunities for academic improvement.
At the
World Economic Forum Africa Summit in
Cape Town
Cape Town is the legislature, legislative capital city, capital of South Africa. It is the country's oldest city and the seat of the Parliament of South Africa. Cape Town is the country's List of municipalities in South Africa, second-largest ...
, it was announced that the first school to benefit from the program would be Bugulumbya Secondary School in the village of Busobya,
Uganda
Uganda, officially the Republic of Uganda, is a landlocked country in East Africa. It is bordered to the east by Kenya, to the north by South Sudan, to the west by the Democratic Republic of the Congo, to the south-west by Rwanda, and to the ...
.
Projects
Demonstration Projects
The initial step in implementing the E-School Program the creation of 'Demonstration Projects' aimed to understand the most effective methods and the different situations which may be incurred along the implementation process. The main goals of these projects were to show "the costs, benefits, appropriateness and challenges of a satellite based network" which would be implemented under this program.
These projects have been headed by "the private sector partners... AMD, Cisco, HP, Microsoft and Oracle". Each of these companies had a 'consortia' which contained other companies working on the initiative.
Six schools from 16 African countries participated in these Demo Projects,
but some (Kenya, Ghana, Rwanda) had much more investment into their programs than others.
The Demo Project was only intended to last one year but faced challenges, causing an extension. The project's aim was to discover the 'best practices' of implementing the program and how to do so most effectively. This demonstration project took place in 16 countries including:
Algeria
Algeria, officially the People's Democratic Republic of Algeria, is a country in the Maghreb region of North Africa. It is bordered to Algeria–Tunisia border, the northeast by Tunisia; to Algeria–Libya border, the east by Libya; to Alger ...
,
Burkina Faso
Burkina Faso is a landlocked country in West Africa, bordered by Mali to the northwest, Niger to the northeast, Benin to the southeast, Togo and Ghana to the south, and Ivory Coast to the southwest. It covers an area of 274,223 km2 (105,87 ...
,
Cameroon
Cameroon, officially the Republic of Cameroon, is a country in Central Africa. It shares boundaries with Nigeria to the west and north, Chad to the northeast, the Central African Republic to the east, and Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, and the R ...
,
Egypt
Egypt ( , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a country spanning the Northeast Africa, northeast corner of Africa and Western Asia, southwest corner of Asia via the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to northe ...
,
Gabon
Gabon ( ; ), officially the Gabonese Republic (), is a country on the Atlantic coast of Central Africa, on the equator, bordered by Equatorial Guinea to the northwest, Cameroon to the north, the Republic of the Congo to the east and south, and ...
,
Ghana
Ghana, officially the Republic of Ghana, is a country in West Africa. It is situated along the Gulf of Guinea and the Atlantic Ocean to the south, and shares borders with Côte d’Ivoire to the west, Burkina Faso to the north, and Togo to t ...
,
Kenya
Kenya, officially the Republic of Kenya, is a country located in East Africa. With an estimated population of more than 52.4 million as of mid-2024, Kenya is the 27th-most-populous country in the world and the 7th most populous in Africa. ...
,
Lesotho
Lesotho, formally the Kingdom of Lesotho and formerly known as Basutoland, is a landlocked country in Southern Africa. Entirely surrounded by South Africa, it is the largest of only three sovereign enclave and exclave, enclaves in the world, t ...
,
Mali
Mali, officially the Republic of Mali, is a landlocked country in West Africa. It is the List of African countries by area, eighth-largest country in Africa, with an area of over . The country is bordered to the north by Algeria, to the east b ...
,
Mauritius
Mauritius, officially the Republic of Mauritius, is an island country in the Indian Ocean, about off the southeastern coast of East Africa, east of Madagascar. It includes the main island (also called Mauritius), as well as Rodrigues, Ag ...
,
Mozambique
Mozambique, officially the Republic of Mozambique, is a country located in Southeast Africa bordered by the Indian Ocean to the east, Tanzania to the north, Malawi and Zambia to the northwest, Zimbabwe to the west, and Eswatini and South Afr ...
,
Nigeria
Nigeria, officially the Federal Republic of Nigeria, is a country in West Africa. It is situated between the Sahel to the north and the Gulf of Guinea in the Atlantic Ocean to the south. It covers an area of . With Demographics of Nigeria, ...
,
Rwanda
Rwanda, officially the Republic of Rwanda, is a landlocked country in the Great Rift Valley of East Africa, where the African Great Lakes region and Southeast Africa converge. Located a few degrees south of the Equator, Rwanda is bordered by ...
,
Senegal
Senegal, officially the Republic of Senegal, is the westernmost country in West Africa, situated on the Atlantic Ocean coastline. It borders Mauritania to Mauritania–Senegal border, the north, Mali to Mali–Senegal border, the east, Guinea t ...
,
South Africa
South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the Southern Africa, southernmost country in Africa. Its Provinces of South Africa, nine provinces are bounded to the south by of coastline that stretches along the Atlantic O ...
and
Uganda
Uganda, officially the Republic of Uganda, is a landlocked country in East Africa. It is bordered to the east by Kenya, to the north by South Sudan, to the west by the Democratic Republic of the Congo, to the south-west by Rwanda, and to the ...
. The schools involved in the Demonstration Projects were also able to utilize the ICT early on in the preliminary test stages of the project.
Other initiatives
Kenya
There have been implementations of the NEPAD E-School program in
Kenya
Kenya, officially the Republic of Kenya, is a country located in East Africa. With an estimated population of more than 52.4 million as of mid-2024, Kenya is the 27th-most-populous country in the world and the 7th most populous in Africa. ...
.
One study was done to compare the learning opportunities and resources of NEPAD secondary schools versus non-NEPAD secondary schools in Kenya. In this study, measures of the integration of the provided Information and Computer Technology (ICT) and the successes across six provinces in Kenya. The researchers selected six schools of each type (NEPAD and non-NEPAD) and used a questionnaire to determine the level of success of the schools within the recent past of the schools. They found that e-learning had been much more successful in application in NEPAD schools since students and teachers in E-Schools had better teacher support in utilizing e-learning than non-NEPAD schools.
Rwanda
Rwanda
Rwanda, officially the Republic of Rwanda, is a landlocked country in the Great Rift Valley of East Africa, where the African Great Lakes region and Southeast Africa converge. Located a few degrees south of the Equator, Rwanda is bordered by ...
has seen growth in their school programs over the past two decades. Additionally, Rwanda was one of the nations which received ICT under a 'Demonstration Project' in 2006 which allowed a chance to utilize new technology in the growing school systems.
But, one study uses examples from Rwanda to claim the objectives of the e-schools program have not been met.
This study cites the nation's lack of ability to fund such an expensive program in a nation with a developing infrastructure. Many schools find it difficult to fully utilize the ICTs provided by the E-School program due to lack of funding, teacher training, and knowledge about the ICTs themselves.
Criticisms and next steps
As of 2012, not much change had been made towards the goal of the E-School Program.
The countries which had the most initial investment in their schools by this program have seen the most success with the program. Many nations are still working to implement the program and utilize new ICT technologies in their school systems but have often found other obstacles, as mentioned above, in their way.
Poor African nations are often unable to invest enough money into the program to make actual change. The program is costly and many nations in Africa do not have enough money or infrastructure to put adequate investment into the program.
This was the case in Rwanda, which was unable to fully utilize the program's resources.
The program is not deemed a failure but has faced many obstacles in its implementation, common in social projects in Africa.
In the aforementioned study done in Kenya, researchers found one of the largest downfalls of the implementation of ICT into African schools to be the lack of teacher support and resources.
Teachers are given general technology training through this program. However, they often have no additional training responses once this training is complete.
This can be resolved through more investment in educational infrastructure at the most basic levels such as teacher training and school funding.
Many schools have also been critical of the post-demo project sustainability of the program. However, to combat this, the project and schools themselves have worked to create sustainability plans for the program and tweak the necessities of the plans. This was suggested in the Demonstration Project's initial roll out to provide a next step for E-schools.
See also
*
New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD)
*
African Union
The African Union (AU) is a continental union of 55 member states located on the continent of Africa. The AU was announced in the Sirte Declaration in Sirte, Libya, on 9 September 1999, calling for the establishment of the African Union. The b ...
References
{{Reflist
African Union
Educational organizations based in Africa
New Partnership for Africa's Development