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ALICT launches in Kenya

GeSCI Admin Account — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 06:53:54 +0000

ALICT call for applicants extended to February 10th 2012. Download application forms here: http://www.gesci.org/call-for-applicants.html

The regional African Leadershihp in ICT course launched this week in Kenya. Twenty-two senior officials from ministries and public sector institutions gathered at the Kenya Distance Learning Centre (KDLC) for a comprehensive orientation workshop delivered by GESCI.

The pioneering African Union Commission course will be delivered across seventeen African countries in two years beginning with Kenya, Mauritius, Tanzania, Zambia and South Africa. Participants responsible for strategic planning, policy making and training and skills development across key institutions and ministries in Kenya will engage with expert tutors on a bespoke veritual platform to develop their leadership capacities for the development of a knowledge society in Kenya.

Call for Applicants for African Leadership in ICT Course

GeSCI Admin Account — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 13:30:35 +0000

Building leadership skills in using ICT for social and economic development in Africa

Course Title: African Leadership in ICT (ALICT)

NO COURSE FEE REQUIRED!

Download application forms: http://www.gesci.org/call-for-applicants.html

Key Dates
Application deadline: January 16th 2012br />Course commences: January 2012
Course ends: July 2012

Eligibility:
Candidates must be residents of one of the following countries Zambia, Tanzania, South Africa, Mauritius and Kenya
Candidates must work at mid or senior level management within the Science Technology and Innovation (STI), Education, and ICT domains

Course Benefits:

Strengthened career- advancement opportunities through relevant professional development
Acquired 21st Century skills for the development of the Knowledge Society
Membership to a continent-wide Professional Network of ALICT alumni
Expected accumulated credits for post-graduate qualifications Working knowledge of web 2.0 tools (social media, tagging, blogging, podcasting, social bookmarking, vodcasting etc.)
Working knowledge of Futures Thinking Tools (Horizon Scanning; Scenario Development; Delphi Method and Trend Impact Analysis)
Appreciation for the importance of innovation and creativity in strategy formulation
Improved Communication Skills
Improved project management, policy planning and implementation skills
Mastery of Leadership Toolkit for the Knowledge Society

Only applicatins from the following organisations may apply
1. Ministries of Science and Technology
2. Ministries for Higher Education
3. Ministries for Education
4. Ministries for Communications and ICT
5. Ministries for Finance & Planning
6. Public sector organizations
7. Research organizations (undertaking research on Education, STI or ICT)
8. Universities (with Education, STI or ICT courses)

Download the application forms form here

Teachers need three types of knowledge in the 21st Century

GeSCI Admin Account — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 07:11:23 +0000

Education at all levels is considered the foundation for social and economic development the world over. Efforts to increase access to education in Africa and Kenya in particular through the introduction of free primary and secondary education have been commendable. However sharp increases in enrolments have put tremendous pressure on the provision of quality education as evidenced by recent studies showing that most children in school in the East African region score below average for literacy and numeracy. Increased enrolments have also raised questions of equity and whether we are providing our children with the relevant knowledge and skills for the 21st century. Many institutions are not equipped to handle the substantial increase in enrolments in terms of physical space, teachers (shortages and inadequate preparation) and instructional materials and equipment. Outdated and inappropriate methodologies and the mismatch between what is taught at institutions and what the economy and society demand, are some of the factors hampering relevance. Technology today offers us opportunities to address many of these challenges: it can be used to reach out-of-school children and young adults by breaking down the barriers of space and time, to provide up-to-date electronic learning materials that improve quality, to train more teachers, to strengthen the management of the education system among many other possibilities. In Kenya, the government is well aware of the potential of technology to help address some of these challenges.

ICT4E in the Spotlight in Kenya

GeSCI Admin Account — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 14:22:48 +0100

Kenya’s Citizen TV today [October 28th] hosted Permanent Secretary for Information and Communication Dr. Bitange Ndemo and Alex Twinomugisha of GESCI on its ‘Power Breakfast Show’. The show was somewhat uncontentious as both guests agreed on the fundamental importance of ICT to Education, and thus entrepreneurship and economic growth. As Twinomugisha candidly put it ‘the Bill Gates’ of this world don’t materialise from the vapor – they come from education systems’. Ndemo noted that most entrepreneurs are not academics, but have skills that can transform ideas into businesses and initiatives in every shape and form. These skills in many cases are nurtured and identified by teachers and institutions in the education system.

GESCI launch round-up

GeSCI Admin Account — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 13:59:29 +0100

Presiding over the launch of GESCI as an international organisation at the UN Nairobi on September 29th were those who have been with GESCI since its inception and others such as the Finnish Ambassador to Kenya Sofie Emmesberger, and the Kenyan Permanent Secretary Ministry of Information and Communication Dr. Ndemo, who warmly welcomed GESCI to Kenya and congratulated the organisation on its momentous achievement.

From left: Finnish Ambassador to Kenya Sofie Emmesberger, Deputy Head of Mission Embassy of Sweden Bjorn Haggmark, Jerome Morrissey GESCI CEO, Alex Twinomugisha GESCI, Brendan Tuohy GESCI Chairman, Jyrki Pulkkinen Senior Adviser Department for Development Policy Finland

GESCI's Chairman Brendan Tuohy opened the launch, providing a brief historical account of GESCI’s journey from an idea at the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) in 2003 and its official launch in 2005, right up to its establishment as an INGO in Kenya. Mr Tuohy gave special thanks to Irish Aid for their founding support for GESCI and their continued encouragement since GESCI’s relocation to Nairobi. Finnish Ambassador to Kenya Sofie Emmesberger and the Deputy Head of Mission Embassy of Sweden Bjorn Haggmark congratulated GESCI on its new status and the associated privileges it will bring to GESCI. Both agreed that GESCI’s mandate is well aligned with Finnish and Swedish development cooperation and they wished GESCI continued success on the African continent.

GESCI is pleased to announce that it is now an International non-governmental organisation

GeSCI Admin Account — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 15:04:12 +0100

GESCI will be launched as an international non-governmental organisation on September 29th at 12.30pm at the Internet Governance Forum in Nairobi. Please send us a congratulatory message through our home page www.gesci.org! The journey from Ireland to Kenya, where international GESCI will be based, has been a rewarding if testing one. The organisation was lucky enough to be guided by Jyrki Pulkkinen, whose steadfast objective to secure international status for GESCI never wavered. Jyrki returned to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for Finland assured that in the weeks that were to come the final agreement would be signed with the Kenyan Ministry of Foreign Affairs. We are all grateful to the Kenyan government for their willingness to forge this momentous partnership with GESCI and we look forward to continuing our work with our host government over the years to come. Jerome Morrissey has taken over from Jyrki, making the transition from Founding Director of The National Centre for Technology in Education in Ireland, to Chief Executive Officer of GESCI.

Reports reveal status of the Knowledge Society in Africa

GeSCI Admin Account — Tue, 30 Aug 2011 11:21:20 +0100

GESCI have released four reports that assess the environmental, institutional and individual leadership capacity needs for the Knowledge Society in Africa. The reports provide us with a rare opportunity to get to grips with the concept of the Knowledge Society through hard data, and a breakdown of policies and plans that contribute to its development in Mauritius, Tanzania, South Africa and Zambia. The reports describe knowledge societies as those based on the creation, dissemination and utilization of information and knowledge, and those in which knowledge assets are deliberately accorded more importance than capital and labour assets in the economy. In a knowledge economy knowledge and innovation are regarded as the key engines of economic growth. The reports tell us that for knowledge societies to be realised education must be viewed as a vehicle for socio-economic development. ICT the report goes on to say should act as an enabler for both innovation and education and that awareness must be raised regarding the significance of science and technology for building innovation systems. Central to the cultivation of knowledge societies in Africa is also the role of leadership the reports confirm.

A Remedy for a Young Problem

GeSCI Admin Account — Mon, 08 Aug 2011 14:31:31 +0100

The City & Guilds Centre for Skills Development (CSD) and the Council for Technical and Vocational Education and Training (COTVET) Ghana have officially released their TVET report, From Prejudice to Prestige: Vocational Education and Training in Ghana. This closely follows the Kenya TVET report produced by GESCI and the Ministry for Higher Education Science and Technology which is the first comprehensive survey of the complexities of ICT deployment in TVET institutions in Kenya.

Technical and Vocational Education and Training is receiving increasing attention from many African governments. This trend is affirmed not just by these two recent reports but also by the African Union which put youth empowerment under the spotlight at the AU’s 17th annual summit.

The statistics provide one indication as to why technical vocational education and training is receiving so much attention. With governments seeking to achieve their respective Visions (2030 in the case of Kenya, and 2020 in the case of Ghana) TVET institutions have been identified as ideal conduits for the creation of a skilled labour force that can make critical contributions to economic growth, which is a requisite for the development of middle income economies and a knowledge society. In addition, and as the COVET report warns the Ghanaian government, if governments don’t start recognising TVET’s role in economic and social development, a lack of skills will ultimately have serious consequences for economic growth.

e-Waste Guidelines - Good news for a bad situation

GeSCI Admin Account — Tue, 19 Jul 2011 11:00:21 +0100

Kenya’s recently published guidelines for e-waste management tell us that increased use of technology especially in ICT, low initial cost, and unplanned obsolescence of electrical and electronic equipment has led to an e-waste generation problem for Kenya. The guidelines have been developed by the Ministry for Natural Resources and Minerals and the National Environment Management Agency with GESCI and other partners, with the strategic objective of providing a framework for the development of regulations and policies in Kenya that it is hoped will help to stymie the deluge of e-waste that is finding its way to landfills and dumpsites all over Kenya. In a country afflicted with many other pressing problems such as growing youth unemployment, a refugee crisis in the North East, and an estimated 1.5 million strong aids epidemic, how does the e-waste problem compare? Well, UNEP estimates the current e-waste generated annually in Kenya at 11,400 tonnes from refrigerators, 2,800 tonnes from TVs, 2,500 tonnes from personal computers, 500 tonnes from printers and 150 tonnes from mobile phones (Press Release UNEP, 2010). This high rate of accumulation of ewaste stems not only from the rapid pace of emerging technologies but also from e-waste disposal by developed countries in the form of used electronic equipment with short life-spans. I took the most modest tonnage of e-waste on the list and thought about what that might look like. After some web-scouring I found this image of 105 tonnes of seized marijuana to give me an idea of the scale of the problem in visual, if not visceral terms.

Kenya Daily Nation special report on GESCI & Government Skills Development Survey

GeSCI Admin Account — Wed, 06 Jul 2011 14:12:05 +0100

The Kenya Daily Nation published a ‘Special Report’ today, July 6th, on the TIVET baseline survey produced by the Ministry of Higher Education and Science and Technology and GESCI. The full article can be found on the GESCI site – http://www.gesci.org/technical-vocational-education-training.html. It’s little wonder that TIVET and youth skills and development are grabbing headlines. A determined government wishes to transform Kenya into a middle-income economy by 2030. They need a skilled workforce to master that transformation, and Technical and Vocational Education and Training institutions are part of the answer. The African Union concur, concluding at their summit last week that the AU and its partners should elaborate a Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) framework, addressing specifically the domains of Agriculture and ICT, while accelerating the implementation of the Youth Decade Plan of Action. With a growing continental focus on youth empowerment driven by the African Union, Ministries of Education, Training, and Science Technology and a large body of European donors encouraging Knowledge Society development, GESCI can expect ongoing coverage of ICT and Skills Development from national, regional and continental media outlets. Read full article: http://www.gesci.org/technical-vocational-education-training.html.

Haiti ICT in Education summit

GeSCI Admin Account — Tue, 28 Jun 2011 12:43:38 +0100

The Haitian Ministry of Education and Professional Training (MENFP) and the inter-American Development Bank (IDB) held an ICT in Education summit this month in Port-au-Prince. The goal of the summit was to foster best practice sharing and collectively support the MENFP in the definition of a cohesive ICT in Education Strategy for the National Education Plan. Jeffrey Sachs (Professor of Health Policy and Management at Columbia University), and Vijay Kumar, (Senior Associate Dean at MIT and the Director of MIT's Office for Educational Technology and Innovation) were among the erudite keynote speakers. Panel sessions treated themes such as the role of ICT in empowering learning, creativity and innovation. The panel session on 21st Century Education and the Preparation of Human Capital was framed by a set of bleak statistics: "There are an estimated 16,080 primary and 3,277 secondary schools in Haiti, of which 85% are non-public and managed by communities, religious organizations, for-profit companies or NGOs. The enrolment rate for primary school is 67%, and fewer than 30% reach 6th grade. Secondary school enrolment is at 20% of eligible-age children. An estimated 70% of primary school teachers have no formal training; 400 new teachers certified each year, versus a need for over 2000 teachers annually"

Africa Leadership 2.0

GeSCI Admin Account — Wed, 15 Jun 2011 19:41:06 +0100

We were off to a rocky start at the Sarova Whitesands in Mombasa for the Africa Leadership 2.0 Symposium on Tuesday June 14th, but now the gritty discussion and debate is well underway. Where to start? We had Prime Minister Raila Odinga’s incorrect assertion that Kenya is the cradle of humanity. He was entertainingly corrected by a Managing Partner of Ernst & Young who claimed Lucy for Ethiopia during the opening key note address. Prime Minister Odinga, who was more than fashionably late, then waxed lyrical on the more recent history of Africa – from colonialism – to independence, - to a time when, in his words, ‘hope has returned’ to the African continent. Prime Minister Odinga reminded the audience of executives, entrepreneurs, government advisers, civil society, journalists and NGOs that the idea of a vibrant civil society meeting to discuss African Leadership was unthinkable more than ten years ago. The frequent and temporary loss of electricity through Prime Minister Odinga’s speech pressed upon those emerging leaders present how desperately Africa needs, in Prime Minister Odinga’s words, to resolve ‘the problems of Africa’. The audience applauded his rallying call - ‘no more aid, we want fair trade’. A procession of statistics was peppered with customary African proverbs oft employed on these occasions: Mohammed and the Mountain; and You and the Future – meeting it rather than waiting for it. Brain drain got a mention, as did systemic corruption, equitable distribution of wealth, lack of jobs, lack of schools and even nutrition. In short, most of Africa’s failings were covered. What I welcomed most was Prime Minister Odinga’s nod to the importance of education in building human resource capacity in Africa and in particular the onus on Science and Mathematics education to contribute to this effort. There has been little reference to the role of education in ‘solving Africa’s problems’ at this symposium since, aside from Dr. Fareed Arthur’s address. This I find bewildering given the repeated references to the growing population of youth on the continent and their largely untapped potential. A young person can only be considered an asset if they have something to contribute to society.

ELA African Round Up Part 2

GeSCI Admin Account — Fri, 03 Jun 2011 08:52:08 +0100

GESCI participated in two important sessions at ELA the day before the full conference opened. The first was the Ministerial Round Table – Education Access, Quality and Equity for African Youth. The Roundtable was supported by GESCI, IICD, UNECA and AADLC under the patronage of The United Republic of Tanzania, and organized or course by ICWE. Senior officials from Ministries of Education, Higher Education, Communication, Science and Technology, and Vocational Education and Training from across Africa attended. Executives and CEOs from technology, and publishing companies joined them, as did representative from the World Bank, the tertiary education sector, and even NATO. Off to a late start, the opening address was delivered by the Minister of Communications, Technology and Science, Tanzania. The focus of the morning’s session was on entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial skills and a panel session followed during which Dr. Patti Swarts from GESCI presented a thereafter much extolled paper entitled, Re-engineering Education and Training for Economic and Social Development in the 21st Century: A Focus on Technology and Skills Development in National Education and Training Systems in Africa. The paper, which argues for the re-engineering of education and training systems for sustainable socio-economic development, asks senior ministry officials to consider several questions, including:

ELA Africa Round Up Part 1

GeSCI Admin Account — Tue, 31 May 2011 10:02:38 +0100

I'm back from an invigorating three days at eLearning Africa in Dar es Salaam. The theme of this year's event was ICT for Development, Education and Training. My first reaction on learning of the location of the conference centre was less than positive, as I imagined hours spent in thick traffic commuting from my hotel in the city centre to a venue on the outskirts of the CBD. However, the commute was worth the effort. Mlimani City Conference Centre is a modern complex. The conference centre is self-contained: no need to walk between buildings, confused by contradictory signage, to reach a carefully hidden workshop venue. On the contrary the stands flanked the conference rooms – both large and small - in a simple square building with four connecting corridors. While the air con was a little severe, the environment was perfectly fitting for a conference of this scale. The opening plenary saw the usual procession of government and big private sector education and technology pundits. In addition, Mike Trucano stepped in to replace Jim Adams, Regional Vice President, East Asia and Pacific Region, of the World Bank. Trucano used his hallmark black-backed power point slides with powerful imagery and minimal text to illustrate his points. Trucano fixes the audiences’ attention on what he is saying – which he does simply, humbly and without histrionics. He talked about innovative uses of ICT and was careful to differentiate between ‘prepackaged’ innovation ‘airdropped’ into Africa, and indigenous existing innovations that are perhaps often taken for granted, or just not noticed. How can we use the technology we have to be innovative?, he asks. A pertinent question for an African audience given the pervasiveness of the mobile phone (more abundant than toilets in Africa, according to Trucano), and the limited access to broadband and one-to-one computing resources. Trucano went on to talk about the transformative power of community, especially when it works in partnership with schools and even the private sector. Where technical support is expensive, some Latin American countries are using the community to help, with computer clubs providing maintenance support. Uruguay, Trucano informs us, is the first country to deploy one computer per student. Costly? Yes. But their rationale is simple. When every student has a computer, every household has a computer. When every household has a computer some degree of change is inevitable – social certainly, and hopefully economic in time. But his overriding message was a simple one: each problem, each challenge requires its own tailor-made solution.

SSA committed to EFA but bias remains in education funding

GeSCI Admin Account — Tue, 03 May 2011 16:44:15 +0100

The recently published Financing Education in sub-Saharan Africa report by UNESCO reveals, among other things, a stark bias in many SSA governments’s education funding. This bias favors tertiary level students over primary and secondary, in some cases to the tune of 50:1. Public spending on education has resulted in spectacular results with the number of children in primary schooling between 2000 and 2008 rising by 48%. However the truth remains that in 1/3 of these countries, according to the report, half of all children do not complete primary education. That’s 32million children and set to rise with a growing population of youth. So where should governments invest? If they continue to invest heavily in tertiary students at the expense of primary can they ever achieve EFA? If they invest more heavily in primary where should those investments go if already with billions of dollars of ODA investments and up to 18% of GDP already going on primary education, millions of children are still out of school? Should these investments be focused more exclusively on the expansion of teaching capacity?

Linking Skills and Technology to Economic Development

GeSCI Admin Account — Thu, 31 Mar 2011 14:35:26 +0100

Ghana Skills and Technology Development Project Over the past twelve months GeSCI has been working closely with the Council for Technical and Vocational Education and Training (COTVET) and the World Bank in the development of a project aimed at supporting the Government of Ghana’s commitment to enhancing private sector competitiveness. The project underscores the Government’s commitment to providing relevant training demanded by small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the informal sector to improve labor productivity in the form of broad skills and competencies training. It is within this context that the Ghana Skills and Technology Development Project (GSTDP) has been developed. The national project, which will be partially financed by the World Bank, reports to multiple ministries and agencies responsible for skills and technology development. It will be implemented by the COTVET. The proposed GSTDP will address the government’s priority of human capital development by combining interventions to improve the institutional framework and overall capacities of the TVET and STI systems, with targeted programs to provide skills and technology to industries.

ICT in Schools

GeSCI Admin Account — Wed, 16 Mar 2011 13:20:10 +0000

Wayan Vota opens the first round of Edutech debates in 2011 with the question: Are ICT investments in schools an education revolution or a fool’s errand? He continues by asking whether ICT can as profoundly change education as it has done civilisation. Can the two even be separated? If ICT cannot ‘profoundly’ impact education as it has done civilisation, then surely that says more about the relevance of the education system than that of the technology. The first guest discussant was Kentaro Toyama, a researcher in the School of Information at the University of California, Berkeley, who believes that technology ‘makes bad schools worse’. The premise of his pessimistic stance is that educational improvement in underperforming schools and institutions should focus on the teacher and administrators. Toyama sees them providing the motivation upon which learners depend to achieve education goals – something technology can never do in his view. Toyama chronicles a bleak history of ICT in the classroom from the 1920s.

African Leadership in ICT Workshop Report published

GeSCI Admin Account — Tue, 08 Feb 2011 13:07:58 +0000

The AUC, the Ministry for Foreign Affairs (MFA) of Finland and GeSCI have embarked on a three-year partnership to build the capacities of future and potential leaders in ICT in Africa. The ALICT Program is one of the concrete developments achieved under the 8th Partnership (Science, Information Society and Space) of the first action plan of the Africa-EU strategy whose objective is to bridge the digital and scientific divide within African countries and between Africa and other regions. The ALICT program will address leadership capacities on evidence-based policy making and inter-ministerial strategic planning for ICT and knowledge based social and economic development in Africa. A curriculum and a multi-stakeholder knowledge exchange platform will be developed to train and build the capacity of 150 future and potential leaders and policy makers in Ministries of ICT, S&T , Education, and Human Resources Development in Southern and Eastern Africa. On December 14th – 16th a high level regional consultation workshop with key policy, research and ministry official stakeholders was held in Nairobi, Kenya, to help establish the parameters for the ALICT capacity building conceptual framework. The specific objectives of the workshop were:

GeSCI publishes new papers on the Knowledge Society

GeSCI Admin Account — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 18:29:19 +0000

The four papers, which were commissioned by GeSCI, will inform the conceptual framework for the Africa Leadership in ICT (ALICT) program; a three year partnership between GeSCI, the African Union Commission (AUC) and the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland. Each paper treats different knowledge society themes including innovation, leadership, ICT and education, and science and technology. The initial findings were presented to key ALICT stakeholders at a consultative workshop held in December in Nairobi, where Neil Butcher, presented his seminal paper entitled, ICT, Education, Development, and the Knowledge Society. Edmond Gaible authored the paper, Education Change, Leadership and the Knowledge Society. The IST division of UNECA authored Innovation and change and the knowledge society, and Science and Technology and the Knowledge Society in Africa. For more information on ALICT please visit http://www.gesci.org/programmes.html. All four papers are now available on GeSCI’s resource centre which can be found by following the link below.

ALICT Consultative Workshop Day 1

GeSCI Admin Account — Wed, 15 Dec 2010 11:19:48 +0000

The objective of the workshop is to identify a broad range of stakeholder views and opinions that will inform the development of the African Leadership for ICT conceptual framework and strategy. As part of this identification process, participants have been discussing opportunities for development of Inclusive“Knowledge Societies”. The ALICT programme is a tripartite partnership between the African Union, the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland and GeSCI. The programme will facilitate the training and development of 150 potential African leaders.

Mr Ephraim Balebetse Director Ministry of Transport and Communications Botswana. The opening presentation asked a series of ‘how to’ questions: How can we move to a Knowledge Society? How can we restructure and reform existing systems? How will we define a vision for the development of the knowledge society? What role do we envisage stakeholders playing? Other presentations went on to explore the following perspectives: • ALICT Project for Leadership on ICT • Building Blocks for Knowledge based Societies • ICT, Education, Development • Science & Technology • Innovation • Other Emerging issues