Summary

Background / Terms of Reference

Key questions:

• What are the issues, challenges and effective implementation models for introducing ICTs in African schools as part of the NEPAD e-Schools project?
• How effective are multi-country, multi-country stakeholder initiatives to introduce ICTs in schools?

Background

The New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) is a vision and strategic framework for Africa's renewal, designed to address the current challenges facing the African continent. Issues such as the escalating poverty levels, underdevelopment and the continued marginalisation of Africa needed a new radical intervention, spearheaded by African leaders, to develop a new Vision that would guarantee Africa’s Renewal.  NEPAD has identified infrastructure and especially information and communication technologies (ICT) development as a priority action area in order to promote suitable conditions on the African continent for sustainable development.

The NEPAD e-Schools Initiative is a multi-country, multi-stakeholder, continental initiative, which intends to impart ICT skills to young Africans in primary and secondary schools and to use ICT to improve the provision of education in schools. The final goal being that within 10  years of implementation of this initiative in more than half a million schools on the continent, the majority of the Africa population would possess ICT skills with far reaching implications for the development of the African society.  The NEPAD e-Africa Commission is the NEPAD Task Team responsible for developing the NEPAD ICT program and implementing its projects, including the NEPAD e-Schools initiative.

During the first stage of the NEPAD e-Schools initiative, the "NEPAD e-Schools Demo" will establish and monitor six NEPAD e-Schools in each of the 16 participating phase one countries: Algeria; Burkina Faso; Cameroon; Egypt; Gabon; Ghana; Kenya; Lesotho; Mali; Mauritius; Mozambique; Nigeria; Rwanda; Senegal; South Africa; and Uganda.

The NEPAD e-Schools Demo is intended to accrue a body of knowledge, based on real-life experiences of the implementation of information and communication technology (ICT) in schools across the African continent that will serve to inform the rollout of the broader NEPAD e-Schools Initiative.

Scope of work

Building upon infoDev's Monitoring and Evaluation of ICT in Education Initiatives handbook, the monitoring and evaluation of the NEPAD e-Schools demo will include:

• Developing a monitoring and evaluation framework and implementation plan
• Develop and implementing data collection strategies
• Preparing reports based on available data
• Providing recommendations regarding the planning and implementation of the next phases of the NEPAD e-Schools project
• Publishing a report (or series of reports) sharing more widely the lessons learned from the NEPAD e-schools Demo project.

Additional information

Please note that background information about the e-Schools project can be found on the NEPAD web site at http://www.nepad.org and in the following press kit.