By Thandeka Angeline Ncube.
The outbreak of the novel coronavirus pandemic in China became primetime news in Africa as the plight of its international students in Wuhan – where it began – took centre stage. At the time of the outbreak, Hubei, the province where Wuhan is located, hosted around 5,000 of the nearly 82,000 African students in China.Africa has taken the coronavirus pandemic seriously only in the last few weeks, following the confirmation of its first cases. Initial responses included the closure of schools and universities beginning in mid-March.
Increasingly, universities across the continent are setting up institution-wide task forces to mitigate the impact of the pandemic. Some are striving to participate in high-end research towards finding a cure for the virus. Many are attempting to shift to online teaching and learning through institutional, national, continental and international initiatives.
According to UNESCO, 9.8 million African students are experiencing disruption in their studies due to the closure of higher education institutions. The danger of contamination has triggered institutions to move their courses online. However, going online is not that simple on a continent where only 24% of the population has access to the internet, and poor connectivity, exorbitant costs and frequent power interruptions are serious challenges.
Increasingly, universities are partnering with internet providers and governments to overcome this critical challenge by negotiating zero-rated access to specific educational and information websites, as in the case of Rwanda, South Africa and Tunisia.
What does this mean for students? In the short term, this means we must maintain access to learning and ensure kids retain knowledge and skills (i.e. through temporary remote, alternative or distance learning programmes). In the medium term, this means catching up and transitioning students who have fallen behind or had a break in their education to re-join their level of schooling and competency (i.e. automatic promotion with a mandatory catchup/remedial period at the beginning). In the longer term, this means there is a need for education systems to be set up with contingency capacities to mitigate and manage risk in the future.
However, it is not all gloomy for Zimbabwe students grounded at home by COVID-19. Lectures, assignment can be proctored via video links or apps like Slack as everywhere.
Yes, it is possible. What´s needed is change of organisational culture in our educational system to adopt the ubiquitous social technologies such as WhatsApp. There are 5, 6 million WhatsApp users (in Zimbabwe) and companies are already developing products such as banking via these mediums. The widely assumed thinking in government is: we need more investment yet we are failing to exploit low hanging fruit.”
Final year students are eager to write their final exams and move on to the next chapters of their lives. The Zimbabwean government and school authorities should engage and discuss a way of saving the 2020 academic year and try to find a “new normal” for students in the midst of a world pandemic.
NUST JOURNAL-ZW 