Clinton edumacates Africa

By Vianne Fung

Former US President Bill Clinton will be in Ottawa to inaugurate the gala launch of Professeurs de la liberte, a non-profit organization seeking to empower and educate Africa’s youth via e-learning at the grassroots level. Pioneered by Canada, this initiative will see the transfer of technology and educational textbooks to help bridge the technological divide and ease the ‘brain drain’ of expertise from Africa.

On Tue., Oct. 18 well-known humanitarians like Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Reverend Mpho Tutu and former Prime Minister Jean Chretien will join Clinton in commemorating the gala.

The keystone project in the PPL program will be the establishment of an online learning portal network across the African continent. The PPL program will recruit both Canadian and overseas students to enroll in a two year accredited IT program at the Canadian College of Business & Computers in Ontario. Upon graduating, they will volunteer on a three-year workterm as PPL’s technological support workforce to design, build and expand the free e-studies infrastructure in Africa. To reward the students for their two-year commitment, PPL is offering partial scholarship for the second year in the IT program.

The CCBC will be responsible for the training component of the project but PPL is appealing to post-secondary institutions from the G8, European and Scandinavian countries for course material, textbooks and reusable computers that will be the portals connected to the PPL online education network. PPL’s vision is to deliver over 10,000 courses from over 10,000 degree-granting institutions, enabling e-learning city-by-city, village-by-village.

A University of Calgary Africa researcher commends the viability of the PPL project but asserts that logistics needs to be considered.

“There is an assumption that Africa is one country,” said political science professor Dr. Morgan Nyendu. He suggested a pilot program for PPL that can undergo a three to four year assessment. “Identify the specific countries, talk to the embassy in Ottawa, contact ministries of education.”

Success of such a program will depend on co-operation with local governments and the resources available in each respective country, said Nyendu. PPL needs to interact with the governments to see how the project can fit with the traditional curriculum. According to Nyendu, the availability of electricity may also hinder expansion of the network even with the hardware at hand.

“There may be computers but there needs to be room to install the computers,” said Nyendu. “[They] may not be able to do this.”

Nyendu, a native of Ghana, said the PPL program can be effectively implemented through Ghana’s model school system at the secondary level.

“The government can concentrate on the model school in every district in the capital­–introduce the program in that way,” suggested Nyendu.