eLearning in Africa: Transforming Education through Enabling TechnologiesHow a combination of technology innovations will drive new models for education in Africa

Thomas E. Abell, Accenture Development Partnerships

Trey Long, Health and Public Service, Accenture

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How can Africa overcome challenges in education to build the foundations required to become the next engine of growth in the global economy? One promising approach is to take advantage of technology trends to build new and transformative educational models based on eLearning.

Key technology innovations are today dramatically reducing the cost to deploy large-scale eLearning solutions. These solutions will enable the development of transformational educational models that will exploit new innovations in learning along with content that can be customized for specific communities and individuals. These solutions will also offer a variety of learning styles in both

group and individual modes, and will complement other educational investments like teacher training and recruitment. This approach will allow Africa to leapfrog solutions from the developed world, just as it has with mobile technologies which drove a rapid improvement of the continent’s communications infrastructure.

This paper looks closely at how Africa can take advantage of these technology trends and innovations in learning models to transform education and better prepare its workforces for the information economy. The greater prize, however, is the transformation that can be achieved through pan-African collaboration on eLearning content and solutions.

Those countries and institutions that understand the opportunity best will be able to align their policies, private-sector partnerships, cross-border collaboration efforts and investment decisions to help lead the transformation … and gain a head start in the race to achieve economic growth and prosperity.

Accenture Development Partnerships, already active in this sector, partners with organizations and leaders to design transformational eLearning models, to drive cooperation on technologies, and to organize collaboration in content and solutions.

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Africa needs 21st Century skills to participate in a global knowledge-based society and to fulfill its potential of becoming the next engine of growth in the global economy. This is impossible with outdated education models, deficient infrastructure, limited teacher coverage, small budgets, and low enrolment. As the world moves deeper into the Information Age, these factors will continue to result in poor educational outcomes that will severely limit Africa’s ability to catch up.

There are some mitigating factors, however. With three major undersea cables – WACS, SEACOM and EASSy – coming on line, high speed Internet is increasingly available, and Africa is more connected than ever to the rest of the world. This is opening up new opportunities for education and employment, and many African countries are looking for ways to prepare their future

generations to take advantage of these opportunities. Kenya, for example, has a strategy to become a Top 10 outsourcing destination by 2030.

To achieve this, new approaches must be considered that go beyond traditional education. eLearning represents a unique opportunity to rapidly advance the capacity and effectiveness of education in Africa. This has become increasingly feasible as global trends remove the issues associated with eLearning deployments. In fact, the opportunity now enabled by eLearning will enable Africa not only to leapfrog investments using key technology opportunities, but support transformational educational models that promise significantly faster and broader benefits to the continent’s population.

Background

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1. Providing teachers with digital materials to supplement traditional lectures (via laptops and projectors)

2. Delivering master teacher sessions by video to wide audiences

3. Computer-based games and simulations

4. Replacing books with electronic devices supporting more engaging and comprehensive content

5. Enabling collaboration across communities via connected classrooms

6. Supplementing traditional curriculum with additional learning materials covering locally-relevant topics like health and agriculture

7. Delivering teacher training in local schools during evenings and weekends

8. Delivering vocational training and adult education via school infrastructure during non-school hours

9. Offering individual, self-paced training tailored to individual needs and goals

10. Extending education beyond the classroom via mobile devices, personal computers or Internet kiosks

Computers have long been viewed as a potential solution to Africa’s education challenges. However, the devices necessary to enable eLearning have previously been too expensive, too power-hungry (on a continent known for its lack of infrastructure), and too reliant on scarce technical skills to practically implement. Over the last few years, however, an inflection point has been reached as three trends - the reduced cost of computing devices, reduced power consumption of devices, and availability of off-grid power - converge to dramatically reduce the cost of large deployments. This makes eLearning feasible as a large scale solution to Africa’s education challenges.

These trends will also allow Africa to leapfrog developed world education solutions by using e-content, low-cost devices, cloud computing, and renewable energy sources. There’s more, however. New eLearning

models, enabled by greater availability of quality content that is easily customizable, can offer a much wider range of learning experiences to improve education outcomes.

This is especially important given not only the vast and remote geographies typical of Africa, but the broad range of groups and individuals that will connect in different ways and in different environments (e.g., Internet café, at home, at school, via mobile devices). Each group will require different content, and will prefer different types of teacher/student interactions.

It is thus important that governments and organizations focus not only on the enabling technologies but carefully consider which eLearning models they need to implement. To do so, eLearning infrastructure, potential leapfrogging opportunities, and the characteristics and benefits of new eLearning models

must be integrated to create a holistic, flexible, scalable and sustainable solution.

InfrastructureWhen considering the total cost of bringing eLearning solutions to classrooms, recent trends in reducing the cost and power consumption of devices, along with reductions in the cost of off-grid power, have combined to cut the total cost envelope by at least 10 times. This means that the investment for a complete eLearning solution for a typical African country with 10,000 schools today costs in the range of a few hundred million dollars versus several billion just a few years ago.

As the trends continue to improve the total cost envelope, eLearning will become even more compelling as a transformational opportunity.

Analysis

What are some examples of innovative eLearning solutions?

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Figure 2. Technology Trends: Solar Power

• The trend toward low-cost computing devices is exemplified by MIT’s One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) Program to develop $100 laptops for education. The price of computers typically used in education have dropped from $700-$900 to under $250 over the past five years. This trend is likely to continue, with laptops, mobile devices and touch-screen tablets costing less than $100 over the next two to three years. These new devices will also enable a much improved user experience and connectivity capacity, opening up new modes of eLearning for education.

• The trend to lowered power consumption of computing devices is as important. Innovation driven by the market for netbooks, tablets, and eReaders has led to low power processors, screens, and other components. Educational computing devices have benefited from this new technology, becoming much more efficient: a few years ago, traditional desktop computers consumed up to 150 watts; today, new laptops, thin clients and hand-held devices are approaching 10 watts. Given the high cost and limited availability of power in many African schools, this trend is just as significant as the reduction in hardware cost.

Many computer labs we visit in Africa are not utilized simply because schools cannot afford the electricity cost. Efficiency gains over the past few years have reduced the total cost of operating a single device over a three to four year lifetime from $400-$600 to $50-$75. Given that the typical salary of a teacher in much of Africa is less than $200 per month, this reduction in electric power cost represents a true paradigm shift.

• The third trend is the availability of low-cost off-grid energy. Technologies like photovoltaic solar panels and wind turbines are significantly cheaper and more feasible today than just a few years ago. Many schools in Africa have either no electricity or have very unreliable power grids. This has represented an extreme limitation to the use of eLearning.

Solar or wind power represent unique investment opportunities because they provide many years of low-cost

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Trends in Solar Power Cost per Watt

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Figure 3. Technology Trends: Power—Trend in Device Power Consumption

Figure 1. Technology Trends: Power—Trend in Cost of Devices

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operation after an initial up-front investment. This is especially attractive when considering the fact that expanding the electrical grid to rural populations will take many years. Solar power, for example, has reached a cost of approximately $1/watt at the raw panel level and as low as $5-$8/watt for installed capacity. These prices already make solar competitive with grid power at around $.10/kWh, even without the limitations on expanding grid capacity. The opportunity for carbon-offset credits with renewable power generation will make this idea even more feasible, potentially igniting a trend towards renewable, locally generated power for much of rural Africa.

Leapfrogging OpportunitiesOne of the most compelling reasons for using eLearning to transform education is that it will allow Africa to develop local solutions rather than follow traditional approaches. By leapfrogging costly and time-intensive developmental phases—as Africa has done by

adopting mobile technologies rather than first building out fixed telephone networks—it can achieve more, faster. For example, in East Africa where mobile technologies predominate, the M-PESA system for mobile payments has developed. Already well behind the West in the use of technology, leapfrogging will keep Africa from falling behind at a faster pace.

In education, there are several opportunities for Africa to leapfrog western approaches. Four key examples involve:

• books • electricity• devices• cloud computing.

With the rapid move toward e-book readers and electronic content, it is likely that African countries can leapfrog traditional books all together. Most African public school systems are very deficient in providing books to students due to the high costs of acquiring and distributing text books.

This means that in many instances a single book is shared between 10 or 20 students. E-content and electronic book readers can change this.

The typical cost of books for secondary education in Africa is $200 to $400 (assuming $8-$15 per book and five to six subjects per year). This means e-book readers are already competitive compared to paper books, without even factoring in the superior value proposition of e-content over static paper content. We believe that Africa will naturally leapfrog books in public education, and it will be important to manage this transition intelligently, as the choices and design considerations are very significant.

The second opportunity for leapfrogging is in power technology. Most African public schools do not have access to reliable electricity. With innovations in solar and wind power, African schools have an opportunity to leapfrog traditional electric power and move straight to off-grid renewable energy. This will create several benefits, including:

Figure 4. Resulting Trend: Overall Cost of eLearning Solutions

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• enabling eLearning in remote schools rather than waiting for the long cycle of electric infrastructure build-out,

• eliminating the costly dependency on unreliable power systems in Africa,

• allowing African countries to take advantage of green emissions programs by building carbon-free infrastructure in remote areas, and

• avoiding the need to wait for the long bureaucratic cycles required to build out power grids to remote locations.

The third opportunity is in new device technologies, which can allow Africa to leapfrog traditional keyboard-based computers. Touch-screen and tablet devices offer a number of advantages, including a more intuitive user interface, fewer moving parts and simpler hardware, and a lower overall cost structure. Especially with younger children, keyboard-based computers create challenges with the need for up-front training on keyboard skills and complex interfaces (often requiring mastery of the

English language to navigate complex operating systems and applications). Touch-screen devices offer the potential to create more engaging learning experiences across a wider range of student audiences.

The fourth opportunity involves using cloud computing for eLearning infrastructure. Africa can leapfrog the use of traditional data centers which typically involves application management, servers, networking, and data storage—all of which is expensive to set up and operate. Cloud computing can turn data center operations into a utility that can be used as needed by education ministries and other organizations involved in education. Cloud computing will also allow governments and private sector educational institutions to share common content and learning models across different environments. In addition, this concept supports pan-African collaboration by allowing neighboring countries with similar languages and curriculum to share eLearning content.

New eLearning ModelsThe traditional model of education involving a teacher lecturing with a blackboard is still the predominate model in Africa. It’s a low-cost, easy to replicate model requiring no power—not even electric lighting. eLearning vastly improves upon this, with the ability to expand the capacity and effectiveness of teachers and with the potential to enable many simultaneous models for education.

eLearning models can be classified into five major categories, namely; read, watch, play, experiment, and connect. Within each of these categories, there can be several different learning experiences, including group and individual modes that can occur both inside and outside the classroom.

When designing new educational models, it is important to recognize the significant failures of prior efforts to use computers for education in developing countries. These include the fact that most computers in schools have been set up in computer labs designed only to teach computer

Books • $200-$400 for a typical four-year secondary program

• heavy, difficult to transport

• static content

• cost has increased over time

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e-book readers • devices now available for less than $100

• can fit thousands of books in one device

• dynamic content

• cost is decreasing dramatically

skills. Also, most computers introduced into households for student use are delivered with no educational software or content and have mainly been used for entertainment.

Transformative eLearning models must be designed to take advantage of the opportunities created by technology. And it’s important to design new educational models so that they are accepted and adopted by teachers, students, and communities. One important parameter is to find a suitable balance between group learning and individual learning, and to reinforce the role of the teacher by introducing both models from the beginning. While most people think of eLearning as mainly an individual activity (and most eLearning content today is geared towards individual, self-paced learners), eLearning delivered to a group by a teacher can be even more powerful. It is an ideal way to extend the reach of teachers beyond the traditional blackboard lecture. In fact, providing teachers with laptops and projectors is among the most cost-effective ways to introduce eLearning. This allows

teachers to supplement their lessons with presentations, videos and pre-recorded lectures.

Educational gaming is another compelling concept enabled by eLearning. In the US, many children accumulate over 10,000 hours of video gaming experience by the time they complete their secondary education. The traditional public classroom cannot effectively compete for their attention, so children are often ‘disengaged’ during school hours. Africa has a unique chance to design compelling experiences into their educational system by harnessing the potential of video games to deliver valuable education instead of just entertainment. This could dramatically improve the prospects for younger generations.

Of course, eLearning also offers many other advantages over traditional blackboard and textbook education.

• eContent can be customized for specific communities and specific individuals, allowing education to target the most compelling outcomes.

• eLearning can be customized to better meet the needs of handicapped students.

• Content can be derived from many sources to better meet the cultural and language needs of local communities.

• A Learning Management System (LMS) can track the effectiveness of eLearning content by correlating assessment results and presented materials.

• Much of the content that would need to be developed, acquired, and integrated to create a national-scale eLearning solution can be leveraged across several countries. If an effective collaborative effort could be created to share the development efforts, it could save tremendous time and energy over each country working independently.

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Making the Transition to eLearningTransformative eLearning models must be designed to take advantage of the opportunities created by technology, but it is vital to design new educational models so that they are accepted and adopted by teachers, students, and communities. To do this, they must deliver tangible benefits. In addition, these models must be sustainable. It is thus crucial that they be tailored to meet budgetary constraints and to follow the trends of technology evolution. That said, the experience in the classroom will determine the success or failure of any model so it is important to create engaging and compelling models, even if this requires a slower rollout or more expensive up-front design.

Some of the main considerations for making the transition to eLearning in education are based on the experience of Accenture Development Partnerships in developing world environments:

1. Make sure to focus on teachers and communitiesThe concept of handing out computers to children can be threatening to teachers because they are usually not prepared for computers in their classrooms. The role of teachers leading the classroom should be reinforced, and eLearning models must be designed to build on the capabilities of teachers. To be successful, eLearning solutions must engage teachers and communities early on, and must include teacher training and community involvement. This is most easily achieved if they are part of the design of the solutions and the content selection. These solutions must support the entire range of teacher scenarios—from filling in at a school where no biology teacher is present, to seamlessly integrating with the biology lessons presented by a master teacher. eLearning will complement efforts to recruit and train teachers by giving them opportunities to build new skills and to expand their reach.

2. Be flexible with hardware choicesTechnology trends will continue, with dramatic improvements in cost, power, and functionality. It is thus important for countries to allow their choice of devices to evolve in order to take advantage of innovations. In particular, low-power, touch-screen devices are rapidly becoming available, and these will be much easier to use than traditional desktop computers.

3. Design the solution for multiple learning environmentsSchool infrastructure across African countries varies widely, from schools completely without power or Internet to schools with modern infrastructure. In many cases, students have no electricity at their schools, but have access to power and the Internet at home. National eLearning solutions should be designed from the beginning to cover the entire range of infrastructures, including enabling education beyond the classroom into homes and Internet cafes.

4. Don’t just teach computers, focus on core curriculum and relevant skillsToday, most computers in African schools are used primarily to teach Information and Communication Technology (ICT) skills. Computers are evolving so rapidly and becoming so much easier to use that the notion of teaching basic computer skills will become relatively less important over time.

5. Take advantage of the inherent flexibility of eLearning to allow customized content and expanded usageWith eLearning, the content can be tailored to the needs of local communities. In some cases, content will be usable and shareable across borders, providing a unique opportunity for countries to work together to create the thousands of hours of eLearning needed to address their entire curriculum. Vocational training and adult education can also be easily added to provide additional value to local communities using the same eLearning solutions.

6. Leverage cloud computing to extend learning beyond the classroomThe idea of making learning available outside the classroom is something Accenture calls “Learn Anywhere”. Countries should consider cloud computing to make eLearning available online in a scalable, low cost way. This will take advantage of the opportunities already available to students outside the classroom—e.g., students that have computers at home, those with access to Internet cafes in their village, and students that have mobile phones with Internet access.

7. Focus on the actual learning experience, including the educational content and learning stylesThe experience of the teachers and students in the classroom must be compelling and flexible even if this requires a slower roll-out or more expensive up-front design as this will determine the long-term success of the model. eLearning enables many different learning styles and many different types of eLearning content are available. This will be a complex effort to manage, and decisions need to be carefully weighted. For example:

• Commercial content is available, but may be expensive

• Open source content is available, but needs to be selected/evaluated/customized/integrated

• Locally-developed content may be important, but could be costly to develop

• Intellectual Property rights and sourcing strategies must be considered up front

• National educational institutions will need considerable capacity-building and organizational redesign to support new educational models.

Recommendations

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8. Carefully manage the balance between group and individual learning modelseLearning can be effective for both group and individual learning models. We believe that both group and individual models will be needed, and every country will need to find their own balance between these. Group learning models, led by teachers, represent the least difficult to implement as they require a smaller cultural change and a smaller up-front investment. These models must be designed around the physical layout of the school to make sure that the deployment of technology matches the school’s physical infrastructure and timetable. The best evolution path will likely involve a starting point that relies heavily on group learning, with an increased use of individual, self-paced learning over time.

9. Look for opportunities to extend the use of eLearning infrastructure beyond school hoursCommunities can benefit tremendously by extending the use of eLearning into areas like vocational and adult education. eLearning infrastructure can potentially be used outside of school hours to deliver fee-based services to help support the ongoing cost of the solutions, making them more sustainable.

10. Consider maintenance, especially opportunities to leverage local ICT businessesJust as communities can benefit from ICT at schools, so can local businesses. In fact, establishing sustainable support models is critical to the long-term viability of any technology project. Unless education ministries have their own mature ICT team, partnering with the private sector can maximize service to schools and create even more local technical jobs.

The technology trends in hardware and power are very compelling in enabling Africa to transform education using eLearning. Those countries that realize the opportunity first can put themselves in the best position to benefit from the opportunities. The global economy, driven by information and communications technology, will reward those countries who move fastest.

This paper represents a call to action for leaders of African countries and international development organizations to make the necessary policy and investment decisions to meet this opportunity. Accenture Development Partnerships would like to partner with organizations and leaders to design transformational eLearning models, to drive cooperation on standards, and to organize pan-African collaboration in content and solutions.

Call to Action

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About the AuthorsThomas E. Abell is a senior manager with Accenture Development Partnerships, a not for profit unit within Accenture. He works with developing country governments and international development organizations to bring technology-driven innovation to the development sector. His primary areas of expertise include information systems, product development, and technology strategy. He has significant hi-tech industry experience in consulting, operations, and development and has worked extensively in North America, Europe, Asia and Africa. He holds degrees in management and engineering from MIT. Based in San Diego, California, he can be reached at thomas.e.abell@accenture.com.

Trey Long is a senior manager in Accenture’s Health and Public Service operating group, where he develops innovative technology solutions for government agencies focused on human services and education. His Accenture Development Partnerships experience includes leading a secondary education eLearning project in Tanzania as well as a sustainable Access to Health strategy across Sub-Saharan Africa. He is a PMI certified project manager, and holds a degree in economics and policy studies from Syracuse University’s Maxwell School. Based in Chicago, Trey can be reached at edward.w.long@accenture.com.

About ADPAccenture Development Partnerships is a group within Accenture designed to operate on a not for profit basis to channel Accenture's strategic business, technology and project management expertise to non-profit organizations, NGOs, foundation and donor organizations operating in the development sector—helping these organizations achieve their social and economic development goals. ADP started as a corporate social enterprise in 2003 and as at August 2010 completed 350 projects for 74 non-profit clients, working across 64 countries, and deploying more than 750 Accenture employees. ADP’s major clients include: NetHope, UNDP, UNICEF, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Oxfam, Plan International, CARE, Save the Children, International Red Cross, Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition, and World Vision.

About AccentureAccenture is a global management consulting, technology services and outsourcing company, with approximately 204,000 people serving clients in more than 120 countries. Combining unparalleled experience, comprehensive capabilities across all industries and business functions, and extensive research on the world’s most successful companies, Accenture collaborates with clients to help them become high-performance businesses and governments. The company generated net revenues of US$21.6 billion for the fiscal year ended Aug. 31, 2010. Its home page is www.accenture.com.

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