E-learning Africa: Technology is vital in closing the African skills gap

Africa has the fastest-growing and most youthful population in the world but job opportunities are not keeping up.

Most of the continent's young people lack the skills, knowledge and experience required by today's labour market. They need relevant skills and knowledge to make them employable.

That was the message to delegates at this year's eLearning Africa conference from Dr Mohamed Gharib Bilal, vice president of the United Republic of Tanzania, who officially opened the two-day event last week.

eLearning Africa 2011 is being held in the Tanzanian capital, Daar es Salaam, and is focusing on the use of technology in education and training to improve the employability of young Africans. It is being attended by more than 1,700 educators and learning and development practitioners from across Africa and around the world, including the UK.

Bilal said the world was being "dynamically transformed" by technology and that Africa was moving from being a spectator to being a participant in its development.

The issue of youth skills and employability was a strategic one that created "global challenges and opportunities". He said: "Africa has the fastest-growing and most youthful population in the world but employment opportunities for the youth have not kept pace with this increasingly-youthful labour force.

"Most [young Africans] lack skills, knowledge and experience required in the labour market. Under these circumstances, the youth require relevant knowledge and skills to make them viable and employable and to make them more productive."

African countries were not expanding their education and skills training provision to meet this challenge because they faced a number of issues, including a lack of teachers with adequate skills.

Bilal told his audience that it was "a priority" for African governments to invest in ICT in education and in vocational education and training - technology was an "inevitable component" of skills development.

"ICT enables people to acquire new knowledge and skills," he said. "It enables them to be innovative and creative. We have seen ICT cutting across economic and social sectors of society. It provides new horizons for empowering societies to change into information- and knowledge-based societies, leading to economic growth."

ICT would help produce young people who were able to compete in a knowledge economy but, he said, the ICT sector itself was weak Africa and producing relevant, local content had been a challenge until quite recently.

Bilal acknowledged that technology was not a silver bullet - "On its own, ICT cannot solve all the problems that African countries face," he told delegates - but, as an enabler of skills and knowledge, it was an important part of the solution. It could, for example, be harnessed to help African countries meet the Millenium Development Goals, which include access to education for all.

He said the conference was a "unique opportunity" for delegates to share experience and best practice in establishing e-learning across the African continent. "These new developments will eventually benefit all our peoples," he said, before declaring the conference officially open.