Trends in Distance Education and Open Learning: Policy ... - ADEA

Nearly 30% of All Africans SubscribeMasais in rural Zanzibar talking on theirmobile phones © Martin KonzettIn the meantime, the African continent has stunned the world by leapfrogging severalstages of traditional telecommunications development. The mobile phone has becomecommonplace even in many of the poorest countries. By 2009, about one third of theAfrican population had a mobile phone subscription – as opposed to only 8.7% using theInternet through desktop computers (Internet World Stats). With approximately 360million cell phone subscribers, Africa has surpassed the USA (270 million subscribers),according to the UN Information Economy Report 2009. And there is still great potentialfor further development.Will future African students, therefore, be learning from the telephones in their pocketsrather than from the laptops in their classrooms?Nine Key Issues for mLearning in AfricaIn his presentation at the eLA conference, Paul Birevu Muyinda from the MakerereUniversity in Uganda said that mobile phone learning (mLearning) was expected to growrapidly in African institutions of higher education because, in the majority of theseinstitutions, over 90% of the learners owned mobile phones and 100% used at least amobile phone service. “These figures augur well for institutions of higher learning inAfrica wishing to adopt and implement mLearning,“ he said.Muyinda and his colleagues from the Makerere University have proposed a mobilelearning adoption and implementation model for Africa (MLAIMA). It evolved fromanswers to the question “What are the key issues for African countries’ adoption andimplementation of mLearning?” The answers formed the basis for constructing themodel using the Design Research methodology.65