elearning Africa shows huge opportunity for workplace learning in the region - and significant challenges
With Africa being widely tipped as the next major economic growth area in emerging markets*, there are clear opportunities for both education and workplace learning. However, the skills shortages, lack of infrastructure and apparent disconnect between the needs of the workplace and educational provision present significant challenges for the region. These observations were made when LINE, one of Europe's leading providers of learning and communications solutions attended the recent elearning Africa International Conference in Tanzania.
The event, which is now in its sixth year, is Africa's leading event for ICT-supported education with around 322 speakers from 57 countries presenting new ways of learning on the Continent and in other parts of the world.
Despite the lack of strong workplace learning examples that had progressed beyond a pilot stage it was evident from the majority of speakers that harnessing the power of technology to effectively educate and train seems key to the future success of the region, given the sheer numbers involved. The geographical challenges posed to traditional methods of face-to-face training and the speed with which organisations need to deploy competent talent at scale, are a key challenge. The ability of governments and public or private sector entities to embrace this on a strategic, rather than a pilot-by-pilot basis, must be the way forward.
While visiting clients in the region following the conference, LINE's Sales and Marketing Director Steve Ash noted, " The themes and discussion points that came out of the elearning Africa conference have been echoed by our clients who confirm the key challenges for them include: massive skills shortages in key disciplines such as IT skills, project management, engineering, general literacy and numeracy, lack of access to ICT both in and outside of the workplace, bandwidth and connectivity issues and high mobile data charges. These are all sited as significant challenges that need to be tackled across the region."
For a full report on LINE's tour of Africa and the elearning Africa conference www.line.co.uk/viewpoints/line-out-in-africa/
*Havard Business Review May 2011. hbr.org/2011/05/the-globe-cracking-the-next-growth-market-africa/ar/1