In The News

eLearnAfrica and the Association of African Universities (AAU) today announced a partnership to provide eLearnAfrica’s services to AAU member universities.  This agreement will help African universities take advantage of the powerful tools and delivery platform the eLearnAfrica portal and mobile application for expanding and deepening educational opportunities.

The Association of African Universities is Africa’s largest Higher Education coordinating body.  The AAU is comprised of 380 universities in 46 African countries.  The agreement will enable universities to expand their reach by providing online, distance-learning opportunities to students everywhere, especially rural areas accessible with the mobile application.

Students throughout Africa face considerable difficulties in achieving a university degree.  High costs, competition for limited spaces, and the long distances that must be travelled are common reasons why students abandon their education.  Only 6% of young people in sub-Saharan Africa are enrolled in higher education institutions compared to the global average of 26%.

The partnership will permit the AAU to support its member universities in the development and deployment of online learning resources.  AAU member universities will be able to participate in Africa’s largest resource for online courses and degree programs.  eLearnAfrica platform will allow member universities to use the eLearnAfrica Learning Management System (LMS) by taking advantage of user-friendly technologies to support the didactic and administrative functions of the universities.

eLearnAfrica is a leading online education platform committed to increasing access to educational and professional development courses throughout Africa.  Currently, eLearnAfrica has over 1,000 courses from top-ranked universities though partnerships with edX and FutureLearn, including Harvard, MIT, and Cambridge, as well as professional development courses in 175 high-demand vocational and career paths like networking, software development, and business administration.  eLearnAfrica is now making available online degree programs to students throughout the continent.

The AAU has chosen eLearnAfrica because of the company’s progressive vision, online learning expertise, and easy-to-use tools.  The Secretary General of the AAU, Prof. Dr. Etienne Ehouan Ehile, stated that, “The AAU continues to support its member universities to improve the quality of the education that they deliver to students. As an Association, challenges of limited access to quality higher education continue to haunt us. Therefore building capacities of African universities to be innovative in their teaching and learning methods for increased access to quality higher education is top priority for the AAU.  This partnership with eLearnAfrica will help us achieve this goal.”

The CEO of eLearnAfrica, Brook Negussie, also welcomed the announcement.  “We are excited that the AAU has chosen eLearnAfrica to support the important work of its member universities.   The AAU is the most important higher education coordinating body, we are looking forward to developing and delivering content with the member universities throughout Africa.”

Negussie notes the advantage for African universities and students are quite clear: “Online degrees are a great way for universities to extend and diversify their academic reach in a sustainable and scalable manner.  We hope to significantly increase the number of students earning degrees in the next few years by literally putting in the palms of their hands the tools they need to succeed.”

eLearnAfrica launched the website and mobile app to make finding and completing online courses and degrees easier.  Students can search through the catalogue of available courses and select the best ones from the world’s most prestigious universities.  Most of these courses are free, and the student can complete the coursework at their own pace.

Visit www.elearnafrica.com or download the free Android mobile application in the Google Play Store to learn about the courses and degree programs that are already available.

The Zambian Open University (ZAOU) today announced its courses and degree programs will be available on eLearnAfrica, further extending the university’s reach into the country and across the continent.  eLearnAfrica.com is a newly launched mobile application and portal offering trusted sources of open education for Africans.  The site has seen over 385,000 visitors since its launch last month.

ZAOU is the first Open University in Zambia to actively empower thousands of Africans with easy access to world-class tuition by offering distance and face to face degree programs in Agricultural Sciences, Law, Education and more on the eLearnAfrica platform.  The university has over 3,000 students in 2016 and expects this to increase by 50% by joining the eLearnAfrica platform.

The ever-growing demand for higher education in Zambia is far from being satisfied.  With more than 50,000 pupils about to complete secondary school this year, the influx of hopeful students has grown beyond the capacity of historical higher learning resources.

eLearnAfrica is an innovative web portal built to assist African students and professionals search and access the best distance learning educational courses, online degrees and professional certifications from trusted sources around the world.

“eLearnAfrica’s mission is to make learning opportunities available to everyone,” says eLearnAfrica CEO, Brook Negussie.  “We understand that it’s challenging to find trusted content on the internet if you aren’t sure what you are searching for.  Our platform was created to help Africans find courses, degree programmes and vocational skills courses for all educational levels from trusted third-party providers.

“It’s great that we are able to offer African content to students throughout the continent.  We also help collaboratively create content by providing rich analysis and data to Universities and academic institutions on the portal for them to best meet the demands of their prospective learners, adds Negussie.

eLearnAfrica has partnered with leading online course providers, from some of the best universities in the world.  ZAOU, the first Open University in Zambia, now takes pride of place alongside edX, the open course platform founded by Harvard University and MIT on the ground-breaking portal and mobile app.  edX offers hundreds of courses from the world’s top institutions, such as top-ranked Wharton Business School, the University of California, Berkeley and more.

Professor Olusegun Adedayo Yerokun Acting Vice Chancellor of ZAOU, commented: “Our collaboration with eLearnAfrica will ensure more extensive access to our comprehensive courses and degree programs for the sustainable development of human capital in Zambia and beyond.

“We realized when we enrolled our first students in 2005 that demand could not be met through traditional methods of education. However, education can be brought to doorsteps, and now handsets, through new, flexible methods and approaches. We look forward to being able to distribute our best content throughout Africa on eLearnAfrica.”

eLearnAfrica encourages African universities to join this important initiative, so that their best programs can be made available online to students throughout the continent.  To find out more, visit http://www.elearnafrica.com/page/become-a-partner

eLearnAfrica is a social enterprise that aims to increase and widen access to vocational training in the African continent. It does this primarily through a digital education portal that is still growing, thanks to agreements with private companies in various African countries.

E-learning for Africa

Digitalisation, for Africa, can be an essential tool for socio-economic development. Access to the network provides possible solutions for the continent’s main challenges, from health, to education and the protection of human rights in the workplace. This issue is garnering a growing awareness, made evident by the proliferation of initiatives that focus on promoting the Internet as a tool for growth. An example of this work is eLearnAfrica, a social enterprise active in the field of on-line vocational training and now the leading on-line provider of vocational courses. It counts the continent’s leading institutions and companies as its partners.

One of Africa’s main strengths is its wide availability of workforce. It is a huge and young continent, and such potential requires the best tools and training to make strides in the workplace. On the other hand, raising the professional level of resources can only have positive effects on businesses and on their competitiveness, including internationally. This is why e-learning, capable of reaching the continent’s rural areas where infrastructure is lacking, can be a strategic solution.

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Many people on the continent can’t afford tertiary education, so Brook Negussie has found a way to make free education possible

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.”

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NICE PEOPLE AT WORK (NPAW), the leader in business intelligence and analytics technology for online video, announced today that eLearnAfrica has onboarded YOUBORA to analyze real-time video usage on its website and mobile application.

eLearnAfrica is an innovative web portal and mobile application built to assist Africans search for and access the best online educational courses, online degrees and professional certifications from trusted sources around the world.  By utilizing NPAW’s YOUBORA platform, eLearnAfrica will be able to drive experience improvements for students and educators from the world’s leading universities; and provide administrators with a real-time, end-to-end analysis of their digital content usage.

elearnAfrica CEO, Brook Negussie, notes that, “Implementing YOUBORA will allow administrators to make data-driven decisions, ensuring the most informative and relevant courses are made available to students across Africa.”

YOUBORA, NPAW’s award winning analytics and business intelligence platform, leads the industry in providing content providers with detailed read-outs of the video delivery ecosystem. With this tool, content providers can respond quickly and effectively to delivery issues, thereby boosting audience engagement, satisfaction, and consequently, loyalty by minimizing experience problems such as buffering, lag time and other disturbances. Such disruptions are managed easily with YOUBORA’s real time data collection capabilities, the most granular in the industry, including the platform’s SmartModules function.

“This is the most expansive deployment of YOUBORA for educational purposes in Africa.  We are excited to play such an important role in supporting open education in Africa, for Africa, through eLearnAfrica,” said NPAW CEO Ferran Gutiérrez. “We are confident that the YOUBORA analytics, together with the rich availability of content through eLearnAfrica’s network, will positively impact the future by supporting the sustainable development of Africa.”

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As the furore around #feesmustfall and free education continues in South Africa, one social enterprise has come to the fore with a promising solution. eLearnAfrica  launched its new online marketplace for education, making it easier for students throughout Africa to search for and enrol in hundreds of online courses, online degrees, and professional certifications from some of the best universities in the world.

eLearnAfrica is a social enterprise committed to increasing and expanding educational and employment opportunities throughout Africa through an innovative web portal that connects users of all educational levels to trusted third-party and collaboratively created content. eLearnAfrica’s mission is to make learning opportunities available to everyone through an easy-to-use website and mobile app. In addition, eLearnAfrica is highly intuitive with a content discovery solution that delivers personalized recommendations tailored to each user’s preferences.

eLearnAfrica has partnered with online course providers to make available courses from some of the best universities in the world. These courses use video and other online resources, and students take a short test to progress to the next class. Most of these courses can be taken for free, and some courses also offer a verified certificate of completion (with a modest administration fee).

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Starting your own business with zero experience or knowledge can be difficult. Fortunately, online education platform eLearnAfrica has announced its new marketplace for online education, which includes several SME-related courses.

The SME courses offered through eLearnAfrica, range from customer service skills from itSM Mentor or a course on starting your business through the University of Leeds.

Students across Africa can enrol in these online courses to obtain degrees as well as professional certifications in their pursuit of more SME knowledge.

eLearnAfrica aren’t doing it by themselves, however, together with edX and FutureLearn, are providing a wide range of other courses to a predominantly African audience. The non-profit edX, founded by Harvard University and MIT, makes courses available from top-ranked business school Wharton University as well as University of California, Berkley University and many others.

“We are delighted to collaborate with eLearnAfrica. We are deeply committed to edX learners on the continent and have a partnership with The University of Witwatersrand, a first of its kind collaboration between a major MOOC provider and an African university,” said edX CEO and MIT professor Anant Agarwal in a press release to Ventureburn.

“Our work with eLearnAfrica will help further the edX mission to increase access to high-quality education for learners in Africa and around the world,” continued Agarwal.

In order for students to progress through to their next class, they’ll be graded and tested on the work they’ve learnt. Using online resources such as video learning and many others, students have the opportunity to be adequately prepared for their next class.

eLearnAfrica aims to tackle learning obstacles through their website and mobile application

Most of these courses are offered free of charge whilst others which deliver a verified certification of completion are offered at a moderate admin fee.

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