The e-schools satellite learning programme, run by the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (Nepad), has linked less than 100 schools in Africa to the internet.<\/p>\n
The programme, first announced in 2003, aimed to connect more than 600,000 schools on the continent, and to internet-enable all African secondary schools within five years in all primary schools within a decade.<\/p>\n
“The demo project is complete in nine countries: Egypt, Ghana, Kenya, Lesotho, Mali, Mauritius, Rwanda, South Africa and Uganda,” says Jeanne Meta of the Pretoria-based Nepad e-Africa commission, which overseas the project. “Six schools in each country have received at least 20 personal computers in a lab, training for both learners and teachers, administration connectivity, various educational software and other apparatus.”<\/p>\n
The 54 schools also received health, agricultural and other materials for the benefit of the broader community.<\/p>\n
Meta says: “Seven other countries have since joined the e-schools programme, bringing the number of schools participating to 96.” The schools – not all officially launched – are in Algeria, Burkina Faso, Gabon, Mozambique, Nigeria and Senegal.<\/p>\n
Nonetheless, says Meta, “Nepad e-schools initiative has been a catalyst.”<\/p>\n
For example, earlier this year Cameroon education minister Louis Bapes signed an agreement with Microsoft and Advanced Micro Devices for a year-long e-schools demonstration project to accompany Cameroon’s 17 new multimedia centres.<\/p>\n
The e-schools programme also gave generators to Bungulubia High School in rural Uganda and schools in Lesotho that were off the electricity grid. A school in Burkina Faso is the first to run its computers using solar panels.<\/p>\n
Participating computer companies including Hewlett Packard, Oracle and Cisco Systems are apparently waiting for financial input from governments before proceeding.<\/p>\n
The e-schools business plan prepared by project manager Katherine Getao was ratified several months ago and sponsors of the online education portal are being sought. But problems remain.<\/p>\n
“The pilot projects may have created a very high level of expectation among the private sector that Nepad would drive the roll-out of large-scale technological infrastructure into schools across the continent,” says Neil Butcher, an educational technology consultant from South Africa.<\/p>\n