Abstract
This paper presents the role of ICTs in transforming Africa’s Education Systems (AES) in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) subjects/courses. The paper highlights on a positive shift across Africa in using ICT to improve the quality of teaching and learning through activities such as intensive ICT skills training to teachers, increase in ICT equipments and applications in schools, and emergence of living labs (LLs) and innovation spaces/centres (InnoSpace). We first provide some of the challenges of integrating ICTs in education followed by a description of key past and current ICT initiatives supporting the adoption of ICTs in schools using a number of case studies in sub-Saharan Africa. We further present various ICT-based models for education, as a transformational approach towards integrating ICTs in AES. Moreover, we provide various ICT platforms deployed for education service delivery in disadvantaged African society (e.g., rural areas) including LLs and InnoSpace across the continent. Finally, we highlight our main findings and observations in terms of opportunities and future ICT for education research directions in Africa. Our aim is to provide some guidelines and ensure that Africa uniformly meet the 2030 United Nations Sustainable Development Goal number 4, which is to ensure inclusive and quality education for all and promote lifelong learning, particularly using ICTs.
Highlights
ICTs have become the most basic building block of modern industrial society
In African context, living labs (LLs) paradigm has emerged primarily to act as a catalyst to address complex challenges in education whilst working towards developing the socioeconomic and research vision of the African Science, Technology, and ICT Innovation (STI) landscape
While there are some positives based on the explanations above, common challenges still exist whether the location is urban, rural, or deep rural and whatever the relative level of socioeconomic development of the country
Summary
ICTs have become the most basic building block of modern industrial society. Mastering and understanding basic skills and concepts of ICTs are highly recognized and adopted by many countries in Africa in teaching science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). Related Work and Open Issues ere are several studies that explore the integration and adoption of ICTs for teaching and learning in the context of Africa. (i) We first provide the importance of ICTs in education and present some of the challenges of integrating ICTs in African education systems (ii) We describe key past and current ICTs initiatives supporting the adoption of ICTs in African learning institutions using a number of case studies in subSaharan Africa (iii) We further present new ICT models and frameworks, as a transformational approach towards integrating ICTs in AES (iv) we provide various ICT platform deployments for service delivery in disadvantaged African society (e.g., rural areas) including living labs and innovation spaces across the continent (v) we highlight our main findings and observations in terms of opportunities and future ICT4E research directions in Africa.
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