CAIRO: The focus of education sector reforms in recent years has been on developing Egypt as a knowledge economy by integrating IT into the learning process.
Cooperation between the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (MCIT) has yielded several bilateral projects aimed at increasing the technology available in schools and promoting digital literacy among both students and teachers. The resulting investment by multinational IT companies are signs that Egypt s high-tech focus is starting to pay off.
In September 2009, the Ministry of Education and the MCIT agreed on a plan for developing technology infrastructure in schools, which envisages equipping 1,730 high schools with state-of-the-art labs, libraries and teacher s rooms by 2010. Additionally, teachers will be trained in how to integrate technology into their curricula.
The new development plan follows a successful trial phase during which numerous joint projects were carried out between the two ministries, such as the Smart School Network and the International Computers Driver s License (ICDL).
Launched experimentally in 2003, the network of smart preparatory schools offering technology enhanced learning environments has now expanded to 146 institutions. The ICDL is an ongoing computer literacy program enabling students to enhance their basic IT skills for free. From its launch in May 2006 to October 2009, over 200,000 Egyptians had received ICDL certification.
Having broadened the scope for IT usage in school curricula, these programs were joined in 2006 by the Egyptian Education Initiative (EEI), a private-public partnership (PPP) between the government and the World Economic Forum that promotes the inclusion of the private sector in educational reforms. The benefit of this model, which has seen success in Jordan, the Palestinian Territories and the Indian state Rajasthan, is that private sector partners offer more cost-effective products coupled with better technology, and can be held accountable for their results.
The EEI has allowed multiple multinational IT companies to launch educational programs in Egypt under government auspices. For example, under the Project Learning Institute program, Oracle trained 80 teachers to factor project-based learning into their lesson plans using its platform, ThinkQuest, and now some 2,600 students use the platform in school.
In April, Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif signed an agreement with Microsoft to develop technological collaboration across a number of sectors, including education. Other companies involved in the EEI include Cisco, Intel and HP, as well as a variety of local firms.
Egypt was commended for the success of its EEI at the World Economic Forum of January 2009. At that time, the EEI had enabled 64,000 teachers to be trained in digital literacy and 2,000 preparatory schools to be equipped with ADSL. Additionally, the first deputy to the minister of the MCIT, Hoda Baraka, received the 2008 UNESCO King Hamad Bin Isa Al Khalifa Prize for the Use of Information and Communications Technologies in Education for her efforts on the EEI, which was selected from a pool of 67 projects. Based on the strong results of the EEI, Egypt has adopted a similar initiative in its health sector.
PPPs involving Cisco, Microsoft and other global companies are swiftly modernizing the health care system by implementing IT solutions, such as the Egyptian tele-medicine network initiative, which was set up to make expert medical opinion and advice available to all health care workers.
Another Ministry of Education and MCIT project, the Egypt ICT Trust Fund, has also received accolades for its use of ICT in the fight against illiteracy, winning the World Summit Award for Best e-Content in August 2009.
The agency produces a multimedia tutorial that teaches basic reading and writing skills in a local context. While significant progress has been made over the past 15 years to increase youth education, adult literacy, hovering around 85 percent for males and 60 percent for females, remains a challenge.
Building up technology infrastructure, starting with schools, has enabled Egypt to develop its own IT industry, which saw 7.8 percent growth in 2008. -This article was first published by Oxford Business Group on October 23, 2009.
