Piers Bocock saw how the K4Health SMS project saved a dying mother’s life in central Malawi.

A ground-breaking project,  Bridgeit, locally known as Elimu kwa Teknolojia or Education through Technology, is now operating for nearly 80,000 pupils in 150 Tanzanian schools. The programme enables a teacher to download videos on math, science or HIV/AIDS to mobile phones which are connected to a TV set in the classroom. Students who have watched the videos achieve improved test results.

  New communications technology and social networking are about to influence the politics of the African continent once again. This time it is Nigeria, whose leaders are rapidly coming to terms with the political significance of new forms of communication and networking sites, such as Facebook and Twitter, as the country prepares to go to the polls in April.

The African Virtual University (AVU) launched the interactive Open Education Resources portal OER@AVU in January this year. The portal can be accessed at http://oer.avu.org and contains quality resources developed together with twelve universities in ten African countries. The resources are released under the Creative Commons open licence. Through the portal, AVU will enable academics throughout the African Continent and beyond to share, distribute and disseminate […]

Young technology entrepreneurs led by Sue Kahumbu and Charles Kithika have developed a pioneering voice-based mobile phone application called “iCow” that helps farmers to manage the breeding cycles of their dairy cows.The application handles dairy cow nutrition up to calving day, using prompts by the mobile phones now widespread in Kenya, even used by illiterate farmers. The pilot project won the “Apps4Africa” contest organised […]

  Higher education is one of the fastest growing sub-sectors of education in Tanzania. Back in 1990 there were only 3,146 students attending the country’s two universities. Today there are 15,000 students enrolled at the University of Dar es Salaam (UDSM) alone. New universities have opened. Existing universities have increased their intake of students and UDSM, once one of the most prestigious higher education […]

The South African government has a broad vision based on Batho Pele (“People First”) principles to bring transparency and efficiency to government through the adoption of information and communication technology (ICT). Gauteng is the most populous province in South Africa with 9.5 million residents and home to Johannesburg, the economic capital of South Africa. A historic cloud computing initiative provides ICT and Internet access […]

New schools in Tanzania have triggered an explosion in the demand for secondary school education. A 400 per cent increase in enrolment in only four years has taxed the educational infrastructure. The schools cannot cope with the numbers of new students, and the country now needs 85,000 more teachers. The Tanzanian government has launched a powerful public-private partnership scheme called “Tanzania Beyond Tomorrow”. International technology […]

  Encouraging entrepreneurial spirit and a desire to develop a sustainable and responsible economy are the driving force behind Kachile, a new enterprise trading for social and environmental purposes in Côte d’Ivoire. It is a significant achievement in a fragile country, still suffering from the trauma of conflict and lacking in confidence. Kachile develops pilot projects with a view to unlocking potential and uses […]