IfG.CC -
Institute for eGovernment

Everyone is talking about the future of work and how innovation is displacing traditional jobs, workplaces and business models. With technology taking over most processes, there is an increasing need for humans to become more skilled, efficient and ten times faster at everything they do. In fact, experts suggest that 45% of tasks workers perform can be automated using current technology. So, what is causing this gap and what do the statistics say? Let’s take a look…

While the Internet has not wrought the similar types of profound, broad societal changes in Africa that it has in other parts of the world, the connectivity landscape in Africa is in fact changing very quickly in many places, with macro-level announcements about progress with new fibre optic cables coming on what seems like a weekly basis.

Ministry of Communications and Information Technologies told APA-Economics that the Korean experts will be in Baku by March 7, will meet with their Azerbaijani colleagues at the Ministry and discuss a number of issues regarding the project.

“Senior citizens are an invaluable, vibrant growing demographic within our nation. However, most educational systems are focused on younger people and limited progress has been made in adopting educational systems to the needs of senior learners, who have enormous potential,” said Dr Rupert Griffith, Minister of Science and Technology.

The programme is an initiative of the Ministry of Tertiary Education and Skills Training (TEST) and will be conducted over the next two months at National Energy Skills Centres (NESC) across the county.

TEST Minister, Fazal Karim, announced his plans for Techno-Kids camps during the official opening of Microsoft Trinidad and Tobago’s (MTT) offices at 61 Mucurapo Road, St James last Wednesday. Prior to the ribbon cutting at the new facility, MTT signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Government, represented by Karim, for the establishment of a local arm of Microsoft’s youth in education and entrepreneurship project, YouthSpark.

“During my second visit to Ashgabat in the framework of the UNDP project, we held a series of fruitful and interesting meetings with faculty members and students of the Academy, where we discussed the main directions of further cooperation for the phased introduction of educational and methodological course in the Academy’s curriculum. This course was developed with the support of national consultants. We were able to test the course on the basis of interactive work, including situation analysis, brainstorming and role-playing,” Munira Aminova said.

Information, Communication and Technology (ICT) Project Co-ordinator, Mr George Rubayuga, said the workshop was part of the Connecting Classroom Project, being supported by the British Council.He named the primary schools taking part in the project as Mugeza Viziwi, Rwemishasha, Tumaini, Zamzam, and Amani English Medium. Secondary benefiting from the proeject include Kibeta, Kahororo, and Rutunga.

Speaking in Dar es Salaam on Friday, TaGLA's interim Executive Director, Mr Charles Senkondo, described a shift from TGDLC to TaGLA as a significant milestone in the government's capacity development.

"We are in the process of changing our education system to ensure those coming out of schools and colleges have adequate skill to make them self-reliant," the Director of ICT in the Ministry of Communication, Science and Technology, Dr Ziapora Yonah, said in Dar es Salaam over the weekend.

Some of them include Dar es Salaam Teknohama Business Incubator (DTBI) and Mara Group. According to the CEO of the Dar Teknohama, Eng George Mulamula, says more training is shifting focus to the concept, a few years back was seen as a preserve of the West.

Secondary schools in Tanzania are facing many problems which hamper students' learning. This in turn affects their performance in the national examinations hence reducing the growth of a learned society.

He stressed the need to invest in science and technology, urging the residents to motivate more students to learn science subjects, including giving incentives to those students who excel in science subjects.

However, governments are increasingly burdened with increasing demand of education services matched with increased enrolment, especially at primary and secondary education levels.

The governments therefore take initiatives to involve the private sector in supporting the education development.

Dickson Mwanyika, TGDLC acting training Coordinator, made the revelation yesterday at the three-day international conference on ICT for Development, Education and Training, which opened in Dar es Salaam on Tuesday.

The forum, which was opened by Vice-President Dr. Mohamed Gharib Bilal on Wednesday, drew ICT experts and specialists, government ministers and representatives of civil societies and ICT companies from around the world.

Zanzibar Second Vice President Ambassador Seif Ali Iddi made the challenge to that end at the inauguration of the Zanzibar first ever ICT Laboratory facilitated by the Open University of Tanzania (OUT) recently, being the 12th ICT laboratory under OUT auspices in the country.

It is about recognising the need to access to information and communication technology (ICT), especially the Internet, to promote learning.

It also takes note of the fact that currently, very few schools, mostly the privately-owned ones, have computer laboratories and other multi-media facilities. Even fewer are linked to the Internet.

Speaking separately at Kambangwa Secondary School, Dar es Salaam, the teachers said they believe the system will act as a catalyst towards better academic performance as well as offload teachers' heaving burden of teaching.

Kambangwa Secondary School is the first institution in Tanzania to be connected with the NICTBB initiative which is powered by Vodacom Tanzania network. "We believe that this system will change the current teaching situation tremendously.

It is meant to engage the citizenry in governance and allows government transparency, as citizens are informed of what the government is doing and the policies being implemented to facilitate social development.

E-government increases efficiency, improved services, better accessibility of public services and more transparency and accountability. E-government service managers need to be equipped with adequate skills and knowledge on how to develop services that will meet citizens’ expectations.

While in the past people relied on letter writing to communicate with relatives, friends or colleagues living far away, today it just takes a matter of few seconds to communicate with a person living thousands of kilometres away by just phoning, sending a text message, emailing or faxing.

CIOs from some of Britain's biggest enterprises are demanding a complete overhaul of the way the nation's young people are introduced to technology at school.

Their intervention highlights national concerns about both long-term industrial decline and the perceived need to instill real coding skills in schoolchildren as early as possible. While British kids are taught ICT (Information and Communications Technology) as a core part of the mandated syllabus (National Curriculum), they don't get much more practical exposure to the digital world beyond learning MS Office programs. Increasingly, it's become clear that Brits don't engage with enough of what makes tech work -- therefore becoming passive consumers of computers rather than creators.