The Minister for Education and Vocational Training, Hon. (MP) Prof. Jumanne Maghembe has confirmed that the 6th eLearning Africa conference would be hosted by Tanzania in May, 2011. Delivering his keynote speech “ICT and Education” in Tanzania during the 2nd day of the eLearning Africa held at Mulungushi International Conference Centre in Lusaka, Zambia from 26th-28th May, 2010, Prof. Maghembe urged African countries to take advantage of online world arguing that that was the only way of getting out of poverty.

“If the online world is geared to bring about positive change in Africa, then we need to decisively, collectively and deliberately change our mindsets as a people towards ICT,” he said.

Professor Maghembe acknowledged the many challenges facing African countries -especially those in the Sub- Saharan- on the quality of learning, IT illiteracy and inequality on access to education, increase in both qualitative and quantitative demand for provision of education.

“Despite these challenges we must move on. Africa and Tanzania in particular must be aware that we are exposed to the decade of online world of which we cannot afford not to be part of it,” he added.

The Ministry of Education and Vocational Training has embarked on a project titled “Tanzania Beyond Tomorrow” which covers more than 4,000 Secondary Schools in Tanzania. The project aims at creating an eLearning environment to improve the country’s secondary education system using state-of-the-art information and communications technology.

“The initiative, ‘Tanzania Beyond Tomorrow,’ will help the country’s 4,000 secondary schools deal with the challenges of teacher capacity and technology empowerment of more than 1.5 million students in a rapidly growing school system, “ Prof. Maghembe added.

Prof. Maghembe reiterated that the objectives of the “Tanzania Beyond Tomorrow” were to improve access to quality education at secondary education level, complementing teacher training with the innovative deployment of technology thus improving student learning outcomes and corresponding educational metrics, Building the capacity in the Ministry of Education and Vocational Training to develop an eLearning solution that matches the needs of Tanzania’s secondary education system.

This year’s eLearning Africa, the fifth in the highly successful series of pan-African gatherings, took place in Zambia under the patronage of the Zambian Minister of Education, the Honourable Ms. Dora Siliya. From May 26th – 28th, 2010, the Continent’s largest annual assembly of eLearning and education professionals from Africa and beyond convened in the capital, Lusaka.

Moving to Zambia in 2010, eLearning Africa continued to build and expand its worldwide network of people involved in all aspects of technology-enhanced education and training in Africa, including management and policymaking. As with previous conferences, eLearning Africa 2010 was conducted in both English and French.

The event attracted 1778 delegates from different countries in the world. The Association of African Distance Learning Centres (AADLC) was actively involved in the organization of the event and her members actively participated in all the sessions.

Link to eLearning Africa information.

Link to Publications.and See Photos during eLearning Africa 2010.Other galleries day 1, day 2 and day 3(click here)