Minister decries slow ICT growth in West Africa
From Rotimi Oyekanmi, Abuja
THE Minister of State for Education, Hajia Bintu Musa on Monday in Abuja decried the low level of Information Communication in oil Technology (ICT) penetration in the West African sub-region.
Musa said: "If we are to make appreciable progress towards the attainment of the Education for All (EFA) and millennium development goals, we must redress this unacceptable situation.
"We can do much better in the use of ICT in education, considering the fact that the telecommunications, banking and finance sectors in the sub-region have reached advanced stages in their application of ICT".
She spoke at a conference where education specialists from 18 African countries were discussing the problems, prospects and challenges associated with how best to apply ICT in the sub-region's education sector.
The conference was organised by the Association for the Development of Education in Africa (ADEA) in conjunction with the Federal Ministry of Education.
Also at a special briefing on Monday attended by journalists from Ghana, Cote d'Ivoire, Republic of Benin and Burkina Faso, the Vice-Chancellor of the National Open University, Prof. Olugbemiro Jegede, said Nigeria could not afford to wait for an ideal situation where everything must be in place before applying ICT in its education sector.
Responding to questions on whether certain conditions such as constant electricity supply was available in Nigeria, Jegede said enough electricity was being generated "the problem we have is that of distribution".
In what appeared to be an indictment of the developed countries, Jegede posited that those who set targets or goals (like the attainment of EFA by 2015) are the developed countries which have already achieved a lot, but are unwilling to assist or advise developing countries on how to go about the goals.
The conference was organised as a direct fall of the April 2002 meeting of the ADEA Bureau of African ministers, which named harnessing of ICT for educational purposes as a priority requiring a ministerial sub-regional conference.
