Towards an African Learning Network – SchoolnetAfrica

AS.: Sara, Africa is the region of the world where especially few people have access to Information and Communication Technologies. Can you tell the visitors of our Website, what your organisation does to bridge this digital divide and to make use of the technologies for the benefit of the African people?

SK: Schoolnet Africa as a concept evolved over the past three years and was formally institutionalised in October 2020 with the objective to improve basic education in Africa through the use of ICTs. We are a network of schoolnet organisations and practitioners which grew very quickly and covers already many parts of Africa. Today, our network of practitioners operates in 30 African countries across the continent.

AS: How exactly should we understand the concept of a “Schoolnet”?

SK: The basic idea of a Schoolnet is to bring schools closer together, first on the national level and afterwards internationally. So the most important thing is to improve the education by making schools interact and exchange knowledge and ideas using ICTs as a platform. The ICT are a means to make that possible – an important and often very powerful means. The size and character of the African Schoolnets vary significantly from country to country. While in South Africa about 5000 schools have computers and about 2020 have access to the internet of the total number of 28 000 schools, other countries have no more than perhaps five schools – that is today but may change rapidly. In some weeks we will officially launch the Schoolnet Mozambique who is targeting 48 schools out of their total number of 7000 schools.

AS: What do you answer people who argue that African people do not need computers but food, not access to the Internet but to clean and healthy water ?

SK: Without any doubt, the African continent has a lot of urgent needs and many problems that have to be attended, epidemic diseases, hunger, shortage of water and many more. We think that different agents have to attend different problems, do one thing does not mean to leave the other things undone. If we do not attend the problem of the Digital Divide, it will be impossible to overcome the marginalisation of the African people. We want to empower the younger generations in Africa, give them the possibility to take the important decisions of their lives based on the best available knowledge and information.

AS: Can you give us some examples of how ICTs can actually improve education in Africa?

SK: I can, definitely. Lets take two of our projects in Schoolnet Africa. For instance, we organise exchange of information and experiences among teachers through our African Teachers Network project. In this way teachers from different African countries exchange ideas on how best to improve teaching through the use of ICTs. The knowledge thus created is available on our Website, so that even those teachers that cannot participate in the interaction can benefit from it. The second example is related to the very important issue of the generation of African content on the Internet. Here I am referring to our ThinkQuest Africa program. We just finished our first international competition in the creation of Websites with content important for the pupils in the countries we cover. Teams were created with pupils from different African countries - from Egypt to Uganda - and a coach who came from an additional country. This organisation of virtual international teams in itself was an impressive process. But also the Websites created show that it is definitively possible to create content important for our young people. There was one very impressive Site about the HIV-problem, the team had given it the name “HIV Aids -The serial killer”.

AS: Africa is a continent with a lot of different languages. How do you attend this problem?

SK: The language issue is one of the most discussed within the Schoolnets. Up to now, we consider it a major challenge. Our Website (www.Schoolnetafrica.net) is one of the first that covers English, French, Portuguese and Kiswahili, and we will even cover Arabic soon. So people in all African countries may access our Website and work with its content. A recent study shows that actually Kiswahili might be the language with the highest coverage in Africa, it is spoken and understood in many countries of the continent. There are a lot of local languages too and the National Schoolnets are trying to attend them. Our African Education Knowledge Warehouse project is developing a Content Localisation System which will attempt to use both automated and human translation systems in all official and local languages in Africa. It is ambitious but an important step.

AS: What can people do that want to support your organisation?

SK: Actually there are a lot of possibilities. Any idea that helps us to enable the exchange of knowledge or experiences, e.g. with German schools, is highly appreciated.

AS: Thank you, Sara for this interview and all the best for the future for your organisation.