“ICT makes a difference” – The new Africa – Europe Partnership Framework in practice

Kaleidoscope is among the first supporters of the New Africa – Europe Partnership Framework.  At the first eLearning Africa conference, held in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia from 24 – 26 May 2006, Kaleidoscope member Nicolas Balacheff (CNRS, France) chaired a session with Leopold Reif, from Hoffmann & Reif, on the New Africa – Europe Partnership Framework initiated by the European Commission in 2006.   The session featured examples of developments in technology-enhanced learning supported by the European Commission that are of particular relevance and value to learning organisations in Africa. It also focused on the ways in which African organisations can become involved in similar collaborative R&D efforts. European – African R & D projects were also highlighted in a pre-conference workshop on Wednesday, 24 May.

          eLearning Africa talked to Nicolas Balacheff about what was discussed at the conference and what Kaleidoscope’s commitment might be.

eLA: As an experienced researcher in the field of TEL, how would you evaluate the importance of ICT-supported education for Africa? What could it add to the development of the continent?

NB: It could add a lot; maybe I can try an analogy. The first mobile technology I know about is the book. Why? Because when books were invented and printed materials became readily available for ordinary people, it suddenly became possible to learn wherever you were and whenever you wanted, even if you lacked the proper educational organisation. Writing and books allowed people to access knowledge without necessarily having to have access to people or organisations.

Today, both mobile and digital technologies also offer access to knowledge. For example my colleagues in Bamako have now access to numerous resources that were not possible for them to use before the Internet. for a good example is the Open Archive, for example the Open Archive in physics, which is well developed. Everybody in the world is free to use it. They can also contact colleagues for discussions or collaboration.

In fact technology offers the possibility to change completely the types of relationships we have, opening channels of academic communication and increasing learners’ access to the resources that are openly shared on the net. There are surely a lot of issues concerned, such as who pays for the infrastructure, and whether end-users will have to pay for the service. It is clear that here in Addis Ababa Internet access is not as efficient as it could be, but this is the situation now - it may well change for the better soon.

ICT certainly does make a difference, but it is not specific to Africa. Rather, it is specific to the reality of our societies, which means you can use resources today that were simply not there before, such as online libraries, open archives, and open source software. Therefore, I think it will change the way we consider the problem of education. Nonetheless, if you have no electricity, you have no access, so there is indeed a general development problem that we need to consider. The economic problems are reality.

eLA: The European Commission has formulated a new strategy framework for Africa that relates to the "Millenium Development Goals" and will - through a significant budget - also accelerate Africa’s development by means of "Information and Communications Technologies - ICTs". Discussions with African states and organisations are now starting about turning this strategy into concrete projects. What could be the gain for both the European and the African partners in this kind of cooperation?

NB: eLearning Africa 2006 is in fact part of this discussion, bringing together African and European stakeholders engaged in “ICT for Development“ projects and in European IST R&D to fathom opportunities of future cooperation.
 
If I focus on the research – and let us say that research looks for claims about evidences of phenomena and principles to support the implementation of ICT – if I take this point of view of research, I would say that Africa will increase the diversity and the complexity of using ICT for education. As a result, the joint work will enhance, at an international level, our understanding of what the best conditions for the development, implementation and deployment of ICT in education are.

But there are still problems to solve before being able to make ends meet in this collaboration. The main point is the big tension between research and actual implementation of eLearning. Many of the eLearning experts here are eager to see things happening in their field. It means that they are more targeting deployment and actual implementation, whereas research is seen as something that might be a bit far from what they can afford or what they can do right now. So we clearly have to consider what we mean by research in this context because there is still this gap: What counts as research and what does not? This was not clear in fact.

eLA: Can you describe this gap? Are there different approaches to scientific problems?

NB: At the conference so far, we have been discussing the use of ICT in education with people involved in the issues of deployment, providing infrastructure, and scaling. This means that most of the questions I have seen appearing on the international scene regarding research have not really been addressed in the conversations here. These questions seem to be a bit far from the current local preoccupations – such as how the infrastructure can reach the rural schools, etc. This is a real problem!

How can we enhance the capacities of the teachers to use the technology in the classrooms? This is also a real problem. The collaboration at the research level might start from there. Maybe we came closer to research issues when we were looking at concrete projects that were proposed during the pre-conference workshop. Then we were trying to reach the questions that were behind it – which could be questions to be addressed in R & D projects. So at this point, I think there is still a difficulty to be overcome if we want to develop a partnership with Africa in the context of the Commission’s R & D programme.

eLA: What role do you see Kaleidoscope playing in this context?

NB: We could invite African PhD and Master’s students from the various countries in our groups. They could get reasonable PhDs, produce publications in international journals, and participate in international conferences.

Tertiary students from sub-Saharan Africa are the most mobile in the world, with one out of every sixteen studying abroad, according to recent UN statistics. But once they come back to Africa, to their countries, it is very difficult for them to continue with the research on which they were working. Since Kaleidoscope is a virtual organisation and the digital infrastructure is spreading – even in Africa – I think through Kaleidoscope we can maintain contact with these PhD students, with these academics from Africa, and keep developing their research projects. We would be in a position to keep them close enough to academic activities, which is in fact necessary to support development and innovation.

In his presentation, Jacques Babot mentioned ‘crazy ideas’which are the source of innovation – but crazy ideas often do not come out of the blue! They are surprising, but they come from the fact that people encounter a large variety of offers, possibilities, and insight that enables them to have those “crazy ideas”. What you need is a crucible, and Kaleidoscope can enable our African colleagues to be part of an international virtual academic community which could play this role.

You may notice that in our field especially – but even in mathematics and physics –there is a kind of rupture in the scientific production of our younger academics. They come to prepare PhDs, they have a few publications, and then go back to their countries where there is a great deal of pressure because of what must be done for the society, in the field, etc. They can no longer find the resources to continue working at the research level as we understand it as academics, while also continuing to produce and still attend conferences. So I think Kaleidoscope can provide an infrastructure - a kind of virtual academic infrastructure - in which our African colleagues can participate.

eLA: Is this also a question of access to information?

NB: Yes, Kaleidoscope can surely offer access to information, access to the communities that are developing their own questions, for example CSCL (Computer Support for Collaborative Learning) or the Mobile Learning Community. Africa is not very close to these communities – not as close as it could be - although people are in fact considering and working on these types of technologies. The main reason for this is the lack of academic infrastructure and economic means.

I think that in this respect eLearning Africa is a very important conference; I noticed that this morning. If you look at the programme, if you look at the people participating, there are many more African colleagues than at any international conference in Europe or elsewhere.

eLA: When we talk about concrete projects initiated by the European Commission with African partners, what has to be considered to ensure sustainability? If the funding expires, many projects cease to exist, which of course, is a general problem of publicly financed projects. How can sustainability be fostered and supported?

NB: This is a very difficult question, and it even concerns European projects! Frankly, I cannot answer the question because it touches the larger problem of our economic view of all the activities into which we venture. What does sustainability mean? A project is sustainable and people will continue to work if the people have the means, and the means are mainly technological resources and the funds to pay for the people working. This means that a person managing a project faces two alternatives.

The first is to look for who can pay for the next developments, which means to apply to the next call. Many national and international institutions are playing a game that is not easy for us to take part in because the call changes, and you try to adapt to the next one. In the end, what you have done is no longer sustainable because even the vision, the proposal, is no longer sustainable; it doesn’t continue because there is no long-lasting policy. The policy can change from one programme to the next.

The other alternative is to go to the market. Then you are sustainable because you are able to make money with what you have done. This, however, is a completely different story. In many cases, it is very difficult to find a market. What, for example, is the market of the primary schools? Maybe this is a domain where the market is not the real answer to sustainability. Instead of the economic market, you have to deal with the social policy of the civil society. Here the question is becoming more complex, and I think it’s pushing us towards another type of discussion, which is how we see our societies and how they organise themselves.

eLA: I agree on the financial side of the problem. But how can, for example, a project for teacher training in Rwanda ensure that the structures and the intellectual input it has invested will be sustained after the development workers and academic advisers have gone?

NB: Very often it’s out of reach because it is related to decisions that are not yours. But we don’t have to speak about Africa; we have this problem all over Europe. You have computers in the school, and then? You have a computer, and within three years it’s obsolete. You have software, but the software will be replaced by other software that you cannot afford. You have the door of a market in front of you, but you cannot afford to enter. I think that what we could do is to try to learn as much as we can and to share and make public what we have learnt so that things will develop, building on the lessons we have been able to learn. The sustainability – I would turn that in another way – will be more the sustainability of the ideas, the solutions, and what is being learnt, so that we do not reinvent the wheel every four years.

And this is a problem which we could try to solve. Kaleidoscope is a network that could contribute to that. There is another dimension of sustainability that is related to the quality of the workforce, the quality of the teachers. The maintenance of the infrastructure, the possibility to renew the software etc., are out of reach for most of the projects. But as academics we have the responsibility to ensure the sustainability of what has been learned. We also have to be able to reach consensus – not to always leave an open debate. It is good to debate, but it is good to end the debate with something that people can use, instead of leaving them faced with problems.

There are different types of projects, but the projects we are talking about are more concerned by legacy than by the sustainability of concrete outcomes because of what we said of economic or social reasons. Let’s say that we are at the very beginning of a process that might lead to a new kind of partnership between the EU and Africa. I am optimistic that Kaleidoscope will be able to do a lot to shape a balanced approach between R&D and dissemination actions of TEL in Africa, offering the support of the network competencies, results, and technologies. The discussions and contacts after the presentation of the network and during the eLearning Africa conference seem to indicate that it has been understood.

eLA: Dr Balacheff, thank you very much indeed for sharing your thoughts.

The interview was conducted by Beate Kleessen, ICWE.

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