India's Amity University offers IT degrees to Africans

India's Amity University offers IT degrees to Africans
Edris Kisambira
17.08.2009 kl 14:50 | IDG News Service


One of India's top universities, Amity, is to offer online IT degrees and diplomas to 100,000 students on the African continent over the next five years.
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One of India's top universities, Amity, is to offer online IT degrees and diplomas to 100,000 students on the African continent over the next five years.

The 100,000 IT students will be trained at 53 learning centers in the 53 African Union (AU) countries under the Pan-African E-network project. The Pan-African e-Network project is a joint initiative of the government of India and the AU and is funded by India at an estimated cost of US$116 million.

The project, which has three components -- tele-education, tele-medicine and diplomatic communications -- is coordinated by the ministries of ICT wherever it has been adopted.

In Uganda, the tele-education component is hosted at Makerere University's Faculty of Computing and Information Technology.

The faculty, a partner institution with Amity University, has invited applications for interested students. The courses that are on offer include a Bachelor of IT, a post-graduate diploma in IT and a diploma in IT.

Amity University will provide virtual educational services through e-learning technology and video-conferencing facilities set up at Makerere University. Makerere University, in turn, will be providing support to universities in eastern Africa.

Eligible students enrolled in various programs will be required to attend classes in the learning centers set up in each member country as part of the project. Learning centers would offer pre-defined lecture schedules available at a tele-education portal.

Experienced faculty staff will deliver the live, interactive lectures from the tele-education studio set up in India. A unique feature of the tele-education system in the project is the offline access to the lecture content.

"ICT is narrowing the education divide, it is also flattening the world and in the near future all students across the globe will be able to access quality education that is collaborative in nature; independent of time, space and distance," according to a statement from Makerere university.

Thirty African countries have so far launched the pan-African e-network project. India hopes the investment will help it sell telecom gear to Africa including VSAT (very small aperture terminals) technology as well as IT services for telemedicine and other social applications.