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Can e-Learning address the challenges in South Africa?
South Africa is a medium sized country, population of 52 million in 2011, with a rural population of around 50%. Due to the distances to many of these rural areas, the standard of rural education and service delivery is low. The government has identified a need to move from an industrialized economy towards a knowledge based economy.
For this to happen, they aim to e-skill 10 million people by 2020.
E-Learning has been identified as one of the vehicles to increase scalability of these efforts. The challenge is not to put infrastructure in place: that can be achieved by spending huge amounts of money. The challenge is to provide the training and content to encourage an uptake of e-learning. The challenge is also to create a need for accessing ICT, by service provision via ICT. This includes mobile technology, as the penetration in South Africa currently stands at 138%. Strategies towards achieving this goal have been identified and are being evaluated in terms of success and scalability.
Education and research in South Africa
South Africa is a “Rainbow Nation” since democracy in 1994. We have 11 official languages, but predominantly speak English, Afrikaans or isiZulu. The economy is known mainly for mining mining: gold, diamonds, platinum to name a few. South Africa and Nigeria have the largest economies in Africa, and are regarded as the gateways to the continent.
We have many challenges, not least of which is education. The education system consists of 3 tiers: Primary, Secondary and Higher Education.
Universities serve the Higher Education sector. There are two groups of universities: so called academic universities and universities of technology. The universities of technology were formed from previously called technikons, similar to polytechnics. The Department of Information Technology, within the Durban University of Technology, offers a number of diplomas and degrees and have strong research ties within the region.
A number of exciting research projects are currently underway and I invite you to learn more about the Durban University of Technology.