ADDRESS BY THE HON. MINISTER OF EDUCATION, SCIENCE & SPORTS,
HON. PROF DOMINIC FOBIH, MP AT THE LAUNCH OF THE 3RD INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON ICT FOR DEVELOPMENT, EDUCATION AND TRAINING
ON TUESDAY APRIL 22, 2008 AT 11.00AM

Hon. Minister of Information & National Orientation
Chief Directors,
Chairman of the Local Organising Committee of the of the eLearning Africa 2008,
Director-General of the Ghana Education Service,
Directors,
Distinguished Educationists & e-Learning practitioners,
Members of the Information Technology Industry,
Friends of the Media,
Distinguished Invited guests,
Ladies & Gentlemen,

Let me use this opportunity firstly to thank you for responding to our invitation to join us for the launching of the 3rd International Conference on ICT for Development, Education and Training generally referred to as the “eLearning Africa Conference” which Ghana is privileged to host at the Accra International Conference Centre from May 28-30, 2008.

The Ministry of Education, Science and Sports, working in collaboration with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Regional Cooperation and NEPAD and the Ministry of Communication will be hosting over 1800 participants from across the globe of which about 70% will be coming from African Countries. The 1st eLearning Africa Conference held in Addis Ababa(Ethiopia) in 2006 attracted over 800 participants while the 2007 version held in Nairobi-Kenya attracted over 1400 participants.
The ovation that greeted the announcement in May last year of Ghana winning the bid to host the 2008 version gave clear indications about the expected patronage of this year’s conference.

Chair, it must be noted that one of the key strategic development drivers to which the Government of the New Patriotic Party has been committed is the deployment of ICT.
The ICT for Accelerated Development (ICT4AD) Policy as you may be aware outlines fourteen (14) pillars, of which education is highlighted, as both a critical pillar and a key socio-economic trigger.
Towards this end, Government has mapped a number of key strategies towards the achievement of these objectives. These include
(i) Promoting the deployment and exploitation of information, knowledge and technology within the economy and society as key drivers for socio-economic development;
(ii) Modernizing Ghana’s educational system using ICTs to improve and expand access to education, training and research resources and facilities, as well as to improve the quality of education and training and make the educational system responsive to the needs and requirements of the economy and society with specific reference to the development of information and knowledge-based economy and society; and
(iii) Improving the human resource development capacity and the Research and Development (R&D) capacity of Ghana to meet the demands and requirements for developing the nation’s information and knowledge-based economy and society.

The overall goal of the ICT in Education Policy, ladies and gentlemen is to:
“To enable graduates from Ghanaian educational institutions – formal and non-formal - to confidently and creatively use ICT tools and resources to develop requisite skills and knowledge needed to be active participants in the global knowledge economy by 2015.”

Chair, Ghana, as host nation for the eLearning Africa 2008 Conference, stands to benefit in a number of areas.

•  eLearning Africa 2008 will make a platform for the promotion and support of eLearning programmes;

•  The Conference will be used as a significant capacity building event by all stakeholders and projects in the field of technology based learning; and

•  provide national capacities to access European Union funded Research & Development programmes.

Other benefits :
• eLearning Africa will bring high quality expertise and knowledge in a cost-efficient way to Ghana through mobilizing more than 300 African and international expert speakers, who will come to Ghana and present, share and discuss their experiences in building eLearning capacities and services.

• The magnitude of the event and its features will provide an unprecedented opportunity for hosting the country’s professionals and stakeholders for benchmarking, learning, sharing, and networking, thus strengthening the numerous educational technology initiatives and projects already initiated.

• eLA will foster Pan-African and international understanding and learning. The exchange on best practices and lessons learnt both in developing and industrialized countries will strengthen the emerging Ghanaian community of practitioners, and will forge co-operation between African and especially European stakeholders.

• The event will have a significant impact on academic Research and Development in the hosting country. European Commission R&D programmes and projects are supporting eLA and the event in 2008 will again foster the establishment of EU-African joint R&D projects.

• The conference organisers will support the mobilisation for the event within the country, build awareness and capacitiy through a nation-wide lecture series prior to the conference. As I speak now a team of foreign and local experts are at the University for Development Studies delivering the public lectures. About six other tertiary institutions will serve as zonal centres for the lectures.

• eLA will have a “pre-conference workshop day” and the conference event itself. In addition eLA will feature lectures at universities with a large students audiences, and break-out workshops in remote regions of the hosting country shortly before and/or after the conference. These specific eLA features aim to create awareness and capacity building beyond the boundaries of a conference centre and intend to have an impact on all universities and important regional and rural centres.

Ladies and gentlemen, the issues about eLearning immediately bring to mind some core challenges such as:
• Infrastructure –(Power, Network & Structural)
• Access to ICT Hardware.
• Access to Knowledge Resources and potential threat to moral status of students without proper guidance
• Change management with regards to introducing ICTs.
• Serious dearth of appropriate digital content.
• Training of teachers and ICT Coordinators:
• Funds and capital intensive nature of ICTE Deployments – Cost of Bandwidth.

It is therefore our expectation that at a high profile conference on eLearning such as the upcoming one, several clues, experiences, solutions would be shared by the cream of experts coming from around the globe. It is hoped that there would be a cross-fertilisation of ideas that would be of benefit to all.

I am happy to inform you, ladies and gentlemen, that as part of the conference there will also be a series of high profile meetings, workshops and seminars

•  The 2nd high level policy maker and industry leader Round Table and Retreat for African ministers of education on “Accelerating the Building of Infrastructures and Capacities for African educational systems” will take place on May 27 2008 at Labadi Beach Hotel

•  The 2nd African TVET Summit on “Access and Inclusion for TVET in Africa through new ICT based solutions”, organised by UNESCO-UNEVOC on May 28, 2008 at the Accra International Conference Centre.

•  The 1st African Summit on Technology-enhanced Environmental Education and Training takes place on May 28 2008 at the Accra International Conference Centre.

•  The 1st Pan African Forum on Open Educational Resources for Technology -enhanced Education and Training.

•  A high level retreat of major donors and development agencies in “ICT enhanced education and training in Development Cooperation” will be held from May 27-30, 2008

•  Over 50 parallel workshops and seminars will be held for participants during the conference sessions

It is reasonable to understand that there will be a concentrated flow of knowledge to firm up the concept that we are indeed in the knowledge economy and information society. eLearning Africa will certainly be a period to make a firm appeal to Ghana and all her people and institutions to take advantage of whatever resources and technologies are available for human capital development through elearning.

Chair, permit me to use this opportunity therefore to appeal once again to organisations, companies and institutions, particularly all commercial entities to support this conference by providing sponsorship packages for prospective participants with the view to building the capacity of many more Ghanaians. The media may as usual help to sensitise the public about the programme.

Distinguished invited guests, ladies and gentlemen, I cannot end this address but state my agreement with Michele Selinger (2004) that “we need to take advantage of developments in technology to secure an education that is relevant and responsive to the needs of society as it evolves”.

On this note, it is my singular honour to declare the 3rd International Conference on ICT for Development, Education and Training scheduled for May 28-30, 2008 duly launched.

Thank you for your attention.