Within the context of École Numérique d’Excellence Africaine (ENEA)/African Digital Schools Initiative (ADSI) –as implemented by GESCI and funded by the Mastercard Foundation the following response to COVID-19 was implemented in Cote d'Ivoire. This project was initiated in response to the closing of schools caused by Corona Virus. Using the Digital Schools of Distinction (DSD) road map and a whole school approach to integrate ICTs in learning, an e-learning platform was developed by using Google Classroom. Lycée Sainte Marie of Cocody and Lycée Garçons de Bingerville, schools in the “ENEA Digital Schools of Distinction” programme in Côte d’Ivoire exemplify participation in the initiative. A steering group included the Direction des Transmissions et des Systemes D'information (DTSI), Ministry of Basic Education (MoE) School Principals, the Deputy Country Manager of GESCI and school based ICT coordinators operationalised and deployed Google Classroom e-learning platform and moved on to G-Suite. Objectives * Meet the needs of our education partners, according to our capacity. *Make digital educational resources available to students to ensure school continuity according to the educational program of Côte d'Ivoire; *Maintain contact and interaction between the students of each school and their respective teachers for adequate support from a distance; *Raise and promote the awareness of the educational community on the on-going e-learning initiative; *Creation of a collection of contextualized digital educational resources; Good practice *Set up a lean and agile project team made up of members from Direction des Transmissions et des Systemes (DTSI), GESCI and the school; *Willingness to make a real difference in the midst of a global health crisis; *Successful implementation of some contextualized key elements of the Digital Schools of Distinction (DSD) Roadmap.  Most meetings conducted via video-conference *Set up of a ICT team in the schools with clearly defined roles and responsibilities in terms of e-learning * The steering committee oversight of resources produced; *Quality control process led by the ENEA School Based Coordinator, making sure agreed teaching schedule is followed; resources produced are in conformity with Côte d’Ivoire curriculum. *Teachers-Students interactivity monitored; *Signed an agreement with the school on the scope of work, roles and responsibilities; *weekly report from the administration to the steering committee *implication of the teaching board (by subject matter & grade level (6^eme, 5^eme, 4^eme, 3^eme, 2^nd, 1^ere, T^le) Lessons learnt *The leadership of the school principal is a determining factor in the success of initiatives to be deployed within the school *So far, lessons emerging indicate that it is difficult to monitor student progress in learning. Consequently, it has been suggested to migrate to Google suite in order to access learner analytics though this comes with a cost (financial, adequately trained human resources, etc) * The skills acquired throughout the École Numérique d’Excellence Africaine (ENEA) project has enabled some schools to have an appropriate response to this health crisis Challenges *Acquiring and implementing an adequate interactive e-learning platform that will work in the context of Cote d’Ivoire educational environment (large number of students:  in some instances, up to 120 students per class, and up to 7,000 students in one single school.
*Cost of the solution and associated trainings *Capacity of teachers to develop high quality digital educational contents *Getting more stakeholders (Cabinet officials) involved in this endeavour and convincing the initiative is not as a competition to the government initiative *Design an appropriate tool to manage and record (achievements and challenges, how challenges were dealt with, way forward)
*Unreliable Internet connectivity