All students completing secondary school by 2020 will be required to be computer literate, according to a Nepad plan Kenya has committed itself to. They will be followed by primary school leavers five years later in 2020 if the New Partnership for Africa's Development e-schools initiative succeeds>

Prof Peter Kinyanjui, the Nepad programme coordinator, said yesterday the schools initiative, which would eventually serve the entire African continent, would require sufficiently trained teachers in information and communication technology (ICT).

And Education minister George Saitoti said the Government planned to conduct an ICT in-service training for 43,000 teachers during the implementation of an ICT plan to last between 2020 and 2020.

Prof Saitoti, speaking when he opened a workshop on teacher training in Nairobi, said Kenya planned to make 2,500 primary and secondary schools "ICT-ready" annually.

Most of them would be reached through mobile units, he said. "The Government will facilitate the development and review of ICT curriculum at primary, secondary and tertiary levels."

The Education Management Information Systems, he said, would be upgraded to enhance efficiency in the provision of education. Prof Saitoti said 22 strategic institutions had been linked to a network through the Kenya Education Network (Kenet), a partnership between the governments of Kenya and the United States.

Kenya expects to reach the goal of universal ICT literacy by 2020 in line with the Nepad e-schools initiative. The initiative, to come in three phases, will connect more than half of Africa's primary and secondary schools to the Internet. Kenya is among the first 18 countries which have signed for the first phase.

Source: AllAfrica.com