Dar Es Salaam 27/5/2011: “Quality, open innovation and the GC21 E-Academy” – these themes have been at the core of GIZ’s engagement at eLearning Africa, the continents largest conference on ICT for development, education and training. The ‘Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ)’ reached out to the more than 1700 participants from all over the world gathering in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania from May 25 to 27.

Throughout the conference, GIZ’s stand was crowded with ICT experts and decision makers, who showed high interest in GIZ’s innovations in capacity building such as the newly opened M-Learning Portal, the GC21 E-Academy, the African open source business network ict@innovation and GIZ’s blended learning courses in health, statistics, decentralization and IT-business.

Further dwelling on the themes of quality and open innovation, GIZ showcased a range of its products by engaging in key discussions and workshops of the pan-African gathering, among them: “Down to earth: eLearning Qualification and Accreditation in Practice with the OpenECBCheck” (Monika Soddemann, GIZ), “Scaling up strategies, open source, web 2.0, and tools for student generated content in Ethiopia” (Omar Davud, Addis Ababa University / ecbp Ethiopia) and “Business models in Free and Open Source Software in Africa” (George Nyambuya, GIZ South Africa / ict@innovation).

elearning Africa provided an important space for extended networking. GIZ, including colleagues from CIM, former InWEnt, former gtz and former DED got in touch with more than 400 African key stakeholders, participants and alumni of capacity building measures, potential partners and existing key partners such as the “Free Software and Open Source Foundation for Africa (FOSSFA)” and the “National eLearning and Support Center Tanzania”. Fittingly, the conference saw the launch of ict@innovation’s Training Guide on Linux System Administration as part of ict@innovation, a joint capacity building programme of GIZ and FOSSFA.

Video footage and interview with African partners and the community of practice of the E-Academy will be online soon at www.gc21-eacademy.org. For detailed information on the overall programme of GIZ at eLearning Africa 2011 see http://ict.ez-blogs.de/ and links below.

Authors: Balthas Seibold and Volker Lichtenthäler, GIZ

Links:

The GC21 E-Academy: www.gc21-eacademy.org
The ict@innovation network portal: www.ict-innovation.fossfa.net
The M-Learning Portal: http://www.gc21-eacademy.org/mobile/
The OpenECBCheck: http://qualityfoundation.org/openecbcheck