Emergency Remote Education in Southern African Schools: Digital Transformation Bridging the Gap in the COVID-19 Era

Abstract

The World Health Organization on 11 March 2020 declared the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak a global pandemic. Due to the spread of COVID-19 in 2020, several countries in Southern Africa implemented partial or complete lockdowns. This caused a halt to the physical learning process, with a need to move away from the usual face-to-face pedagogical methodologies and adopt emergency innovative instructional strategies that integrate digital technologies. This concept paper reviews the literature on the significance of digital transformation in empowering remote learning in times of crisis in Botswana, South Africa, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. These four countries were purposively selected because they play an integral part in the education sector in Southern Africa. Data were obtained from secondary sources. The findings are that, in Southern Africa, during the lockdowns, a variety of technological tools were used for emergency remote learning. These tools include the use of zero-rated applications such as television, radio, digital schools using Zoom and Google Classroom. The findings show that remote learning was the best emergency method to give learners access to education, although it had some challenges, including unfamiliarity with new technology, methods of dealing with the unknown, poor or no infrastructure, higher drop-out rates, and lowered academic achievement levels. From the findings, we conclude that the Southern African education sector massively adopted digital transformation in education, although some challenges were identified. A proposed integrated framework on digital transformation for schools in Southern Africa was crafted. The framework is likely to be feasible in the countries that are struggling to balance the learning process amid the new normal which is remote learning.