Building ICT Capacity in Africa's Education System

Welcome to your course on Building ICT Capacity in Africa's Education System!

Equipping schools with devices has never been enough on its own. Across Africa, the binding constraint on digital skills is rarely the hardware; it is the curriculum, the teachers, the infrastructure and the partnerships that decide whether technology ever reaches a learner. This course equips curriculum developers and education officials to build ICT capacity across primary, secondary, TVET and higher education, and to evaluate the approaches that actually work.

You will examine the pivotal role of the curriculum, which carries knowledge, skills, attitudes and values into a digital age, and the conditions effective ICT teaching depends on. The course then turns to the TVET sector and six levers that strengthen it, works through seven recommendations for building ICT capacity, and puts them into practice through four higher-education interventions and two rural case studies from Bangladesh. It closes with a readiness self-check and an ungraded project to design a grounded ICT recommendation for your own local context.

Learning Outcomes

By the end of this course, you will be able to:

• Explain the pivotal role the curriculum plays and evaluate three approaches to building ICT capacity in schools.
• Compare six levers for strengthening the TVET sector and the skilled ICT workforce it must produce.
• Work through seven recommendations for building ICT capacity across primary, secondary, TVET and higher education.
• Apply higher-education interventions and rural case-study lessons to design a grounded ICT recommendation for your own context.

Who is this course for?

This course is designed for curriculum developers, education officials, ICT and TVET policymakers and programme managers across Africa. It is highly beneficial for individuals who are:

• Shaping how technology enters the classroom across primary, secondary, TVET or higher education.
• Seeking to evaluate or reform ICT-in-education strategies, teacher development, or infrastructure programmes.
• Responsible for aligning ICT-skills policy with national digital strategy and the realities of their own local context.