As many South Africans battle to afford tertiary education fees, the CEO of eLearnAfrica, Negussie, is spearheading an online platform that offers free courses and degree programmes.
Across Africa, the educational infrastructure cannot meet the current or future needs of the general population. While higher education participation rates in many high-income countries are well over 50%, in sub-Saharan Africa they are in most cases below 5%. As debates about and demands for free education continue, eLearnAfrica presents an affordable solution for students throughout the continent.
As an education platform, eLearnAfrica offers opportunities to African students at every stage of higher education and career development, with courses from the world’s best universities. There are currently 1 071 programmes on the course catalogue, including full degrees, vocational training, and industry-standard professional certifications.
Establishing an education platform
“We set out to combine local knowledge with long-term global expertise to bring the most trusted online educational content to Africa,” says Negussie. “Only a month after going live, we have over 225 000 visitors searching for trusted, professional courses, programmes and degrees.”
He adds that establishing eLearnAfrica has been a truly global effort of collaboration and partnerships. The online platform works with social learning platform FutureLearn and EdX, a non-profit online learning destination founded by Harvard University and MIT, offering hundreds of courses from the world’s top institutions such as top-ranked Wharton Business School, the University of California, Berkeley, and more.
To ensure that potential students are able to navigate the video-based training content, eLearnAfrica has also partnered with itSM Solutions to offer classroom-style, on-demand, video-based professional certification programmes.
“We have been overwhelmed by the response from people who are hungry for quality online content,” says Negussie. “It’s encouraging that we have an answer to a clear need in the market. More and more trusted content providers continue to approach us to include their programmes, degrees and offerings to African high school graduates who cannot study in formal institutions like universities or vocational colleges, largely due to a lack of funding and resources.”
