Qingdao, China; 10-11 July,2017: GESCI joined governments and other development partners and education stakeholders at the UNESCO International Forum on ICT and Education 2030 co-organized by UNESCO and the Government of the People’s Republic of China. The forum focuses on harnessing ICT to achieve Sustainable Development Goal 4 for Education 2030. Contributing to the achievement of Sustainable Development Goal 4 is part of GESCI’s mission as highlighted in its 2017- 2020 Strategy GESCI’s manager of Advocacy, Strategic Alliances and Programme Development Dr. Tarek Chehidi made  a presentation on the GESCI African Digital Schools Initiative (ADSI) programme: a scalable and sustainable model to transform secondary schools and the education practice during the session on “Promoting Digital Innovations for SDG4: Global partnership.” Dr. Chehidi also moderated a session on “Future e-schools” during which models of future e-schools from China, Finland, Republic of Korea were presented. The Forum is a follow-up to the International Conference on ICT and Post-2015 Education, which seeks to reaffirm the commitments made in the Qingdao Declaration, and reinforce the inter-sectoral multi-stakeholder platform fostered during the 2015 Qingdao Conference through deepening North-South knowledge sharing, designing cooperation strategies, and outlining action plans on scaling up digital innovations and best practices towards Education 2030. To this effect, concrete proposals on a global action network and pilot projects for leveraging ICT to achieve Education 2030 will be presented and discussed. The objectives of the Forum are to:

• Share national policies and programmes that aim to capture digital innovations to accelerate the achievement of SDG 4 – Education 2030
• Explore the digital innovations and best practices that could be scaled up to enable new school models and transform the education provision
• Formulate partnerships and develop action plans around flagship projects on leveraging ICT to take forward SDG 4 – Education 2030

More info on the forum at : http://en.unesco.org/themes/ict-education/international-forum-2017