This book critically examines how the COVID-19 pandemic has stimulated digital innovation within higher education using case studies from Africa. Imagining a future for post-pandemic higher education, it analyses the challenges and opportunities of remote teaching and learning. The book explores the structural barriers around access to higher education and how these were reconfigured and amplified by technology-dependent teaching and learning. Case studies from countries across Africa provide unique insights into the challenges experienced by Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) during the COVID-19 pandemic, examining examples of emergent pedagogies such as online, mobile and social media-enhanced teaching, and blended learning. The chapters consider online assessment and teacher professional development, critically examining some of the benefits and structural challenges of digital technology integration in the context of pre-existing education disparities (such as students and teachers living in poverty-stricken and highly unequal societies). Offering invaluable insights into higher education in Africa, the book will be essential reading for researchers, scholars, and students in the fields of higher education study, digital education and educational technology, and African and comparative education. It will also be of interest to higher education managers and policymakers.

The book consists of novel and empirical research in broad areas of technology and curriculum in selected African countries. The central theme of the book is technology and the higher education curriculum. The book consists of case studies from selected African countries, namely, Lesotho; Namibia; Kenya; South Africa; Zimbabwe; Tanzania and Nigeria. These studies confirm that in this contemporary digital era, educational technology is playing an increasingly important role. It has become so ubiquitous and fundamental in the teaching and learning. Higher education sectors across the continent are increasingly compelled to use educational technology to keep up with needs of 21st century students who want to be afforded opportunities to be able to learn in real time, anytime, and on their own terms using opportunities for creative innovation made possible by new information and communication technologies.

This overview reviews existing national and international policies with regard to the use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) to enhance teaching and learning within institutions of tertiary education. Common areas of strength and of weakness with regard to educational technology readiness in the Partnership for Higher Education in Africa (PHEA) countries are explored. The challenges to the deployment of ICT in tertiary education within the PHEA countries are eoulined. Finally lessons learned and possibilities for collaboration are highlighted.

Teacher education is vital for the realization of a nation’s development aspirations. The conception, incubation and delivery of any national development policy, as well as the reform and implementation of extant policies, are driven by the quality of teachers and their products within a functional educational system. Indeed, national and global models of development, including the millennium development goals revolve round the frames of quality education, beginning with teacher education. It is therefore important to have functional teacher education systems in Africa to help its citizens explore the networking of the world as a global village. This is achievable through a systematic mobilization of national resources and visible commitment to the development of a modernized cadre of scientific and technological manpower. This book is a rich exposition of theories and praxes essential for the development of teacher education in Africa. The book has immense benefits for teachers, teacher trainers, funding agencies, other stakeholders and policy makers.

This book interrogates media and technology in the 21st century higher and tertiary education in Africa. Using Zimbabwe as its case study, the book highlights the immense changes that the digital revolution has brought to higher institutions of learning in Africa, including changes in teaching and learning. Framed from an anti-colonial perspective, the book argues that digital change, though critical in revolutionising education in Africa, has come with a price as it has resulted in some epistemological erasures and injustices meted against the poor. The book makes a critical contribution as it quests to correct the misdemeanours and injustices caused by digital gaps in African societies. The authors argue that the future and success of digital technology in Africa lie in how well African countries will culturally and contextually sensor technology and attend to the problems caused by digital gaps. The book provides a re-invigorated overview and nuanced analyses of the role of media and technology in revolutionising 21st century higher and tertiary education in Africa. It provides pointers and insights on how African countries can reformulate their education policy in a manner that is in sync with the level of digital technology of the time. This is an important addition to critical debates on media and technology studies in education in Africa.

Nowadays, technology affects practically all activities in our life. The new digital technologies have permeated economy markets, politics, our workplaces, the ways we communicate with each other, our home activities, as well as operation of all levels of education from kindergarten to doctoral studies. The new technologies challenge higher education institutions world-wide to redefine their student constituencies, their partners and competitors and to redesign their research infrastructures and teaching practices. These multiple contrasting trends, and the visible gap between some sweeping expectations echoed in the 1990s as to the immense impacts of digital technologies on higher education environments and the actual reality, are discussed in this book.