The New Partnership for Africa’s Development (Nepad), through the e-Africa Commission, is rolling out its e-School plan in Africa by the end of the year. African Ministries have approved the business plan in order to start implementation of the plan across the region.
The e-School project will improve the quality of teaching and learning in African schools. The project will create a critical mass of African youths with ICT skills in order to bridge the digital divide between Africa, America and Europe. The initial phase of the e-Schools project was launched in 11 African countries including South Africa, Egypt, Mauritius, Rwanda, Senegal and Uganda in 2003. After a successful trail in 11 countries, Nepad now wants to expand the project to cover all Africa. The project is a joint venture of a Cisco consortium, a Microsoft consortium and the Nepad e-Africa Commission.
It will involve the establishment of an Africa-wide satellite network that will connect the schools to the Internet, as well as points within each country from which educational content will be fed to the schools on a continual basis. It is expected that the project will cover around 600, 000 secondary schools on the entire African continent by 2015. Each school will be equipped with a computer laboratory containing at least 20 computers, a server and network infrastructure, as well as peripherals such as scanners, whiteboards and printers.
