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eLearning Africa is a three-day annual international conference on ICT-enhanced education, training and development in Africa which is organised by ICWE GmbH. Each year the event is hosted and co-organised by a different African government. It has been opened on previous occasions by Presidents, Vice Presidents and Prime Ministers of several African countries including Hage Geingob, Abdoulaye Wade, George Kunda, Edward Ssekandi, Pascal Koupaki, Mohamed Gharib Bilal and Debretsion Gebremichael.
Contents
- Participants
- Partners and sponsors
- Programme
- Ministerial Round Table
- The eLearning Africa Report
- References
The conference series was inaugurated at the United Nations Conference Centre in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia in 2006 and has since visited Kenya, Ghana, Senegal, Zambia, Tanzania, Benin, Namibia, Uganda and Ethiopia. eLearning Africa 2016, the 11th edition of the conference, took place at the Royal Maxim Kempinski Hotel, Cairo, Egypt on 24-26 May, 2016 and was opened by Yasser ElKady, Egyptian Minister of Communications and Information Technology. Keynote speakers at the 2016 conference included Ismail Serageldin, Thierry Zomahoun, Günter Nooke, Toyosi Akerele-Ogunsiji, Toby Shapshak and Elham Mahmood Ahmed Ibrahim.
Participants
Delegates are decision-makers from the education, business and government sectors. Roughly 85% of these are from African countries. Each year the following numbers have participated in the conference: Ethiopia 2006: 832 participants. Kenya 2007: 1,406 participants. Ghana 2008: 1,502 participants. Senegal 2009: 1,350 participants. Zambia 2010: 1,778 participants. Tanzania 2011: 1,702 participants. Benin 2012: 1,483 participants. Namibia 2013: 1,480 participants. Uganda 2014: 1,497 participants. Ethiopia 2015: 1,389 participants.
Partners and sponsors
eLearning Africa has previously partnered with organisations such as the African Union, ECOWAS, GIZ, UNECA, UNESCO-UNEVOC and the African Development Bank and the conference has been sponsored on different occasions by companies such as Microsoft, Google, Intel and Nokia.
Programme
The three-day conference is held in English and French. It includes three Plenary sessions and a Plenary debate with experts invited to present keynote speeches on trends and developments in the education and training sectors. On the second and third days of the conference, roughly 300 speakers in around sixty-four smaller breakout sessions give presentations exploring further issues in Africa such as access to learning and vocational training, equality and quality in education, skills and employability, health, literacy and governance. The sessions take a variety of different forms including Applied Practice, Discovery Demo, Learning Cafés and Knowledge Exchange sessions. In addition to the main programme, a number of special events take place alongside the conference, such as hackathons, product launches, sponsored workshops and best practice showcases. An exhibition is held throughout the conference in which exhibitors showcase their products and services and network with the conference delegates.
Ministerial Round Table
African Ministers and high-level ministerial representatives attend the Ministerial Round Table (MRT) discussions which take place parallel to the conference before the Opening Plenary on the first day. The MRT discussions are a closed meeting on ICT for development, education and training and are held under a different theme each year, the 2016 theme being ‘Making Vision Reality’.
The eLearning Africa Report
The eLearning Africa Report provides an annual overview of the state of eLearning in Africa and considers the impact technology is having on education and development throughout the continent. The report includes surveys and country guides as well as features, news and opinion pieces from a variety of authors. The report is free to download and is published every year around the time of the eLearning Africa conference.