Forum News

The First Inter-Ministerial Forum held from 9 – 11 December in Tunis ended with a call for African countries to prepare and adopt a national policy framework to integrate ICT in their education and training systems. The Conference also called educators to invest much more time, money and effort in information and communication technology (ICT).

“We at ADEA are heartened by the large and quality turn-out at this event.” declared Hamidou Boukary, Acting Executive Secretary, at the official opening of the Ministerial Forum on the Integration of ICTs in Education and Training in Africa.

Dr. Peck Cho, emeritus professor of the University of Dongguk, Republic of Korea, began his presentation on “ICT in Education: A Blessing or a Curse?” by taking us back in time to the 1950s, following the Japanese occupation, when Korea was “one of the poorest countries in the world”. The country’s disastrous situation at that time was reversed “within a single generation”, and Korea’s development is now founded on a flourishing economy.

The participants in this second session shared their political, institutional or private-sector experiences aimed at optimizing ICT integration so as to provide quality education for all.
Côte d’Ivoire, Kenya, the Organization of Ibero-American States for Education, Science and Culture (OEI), the Global eSchools and Communities Initiative (GESCI), and Hewlett Packard took part in this discussion.