Excellence in Africa: launch of the programme "Digital Education"
© 2020 EPFL
With around half its population under 20 years old and the increasing use of electronic devices, Africa is ideally poised to benefit from the emergence of digital education and to rapidly scale up access to quality education to talented and motivated students.
Currently, Master and PhD students are limited by the lack of advanced courses, especially in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM). This has been further exacerbated by the impact of the COVID-19 crisis, resulting in the closure of many university campuses.
As part of its joint initiative ‘Excellence in Africa’, Mohammed VI Polytechnic University (UM6P) and EPFL are launching one of its three pillars: the Digital Education programme. The latter will promote the sustainable integration of digital education in the teaching process of African institutions of higher education in STEM disciplines, as a means to strengthen the quality of teaching as well as the competencies of graduates.
The first call for expressions of interest in the Creation of a Centre of Competence in Digital Education (C-CoDE) is now open, with a deadline for applications set for the 31st of July 2020.
This call will establish the first three (out of a total of six) institutional partnerships with renowned African universities in 2020, leading to the creation and development of a Centre of Competence in Digital Education at each partner university. In addition to these centres, lecturers will strengthen their techno-pedagogical skills through trainings to produce and use digital content in their courses.
African public higher education institutions, with a minimum of 3 years of continuous operations are encouraged to apply. Interested institutions are invited to submit an online application to the Call for expressions of interest, together with the requested documentation. Following the review of the initial applications, selected institutions will be invited to submit a full proposal by mid-October 2020. The final selection will be made by the Joint Steering Committee of the Excellence in Africa initiative.
For further information, please visit the Excellence in Africa website.