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STC30 is the origin of stem cells in the treatment & prevention of diseases. STEM CELLS are undifferentiated biological cells that can differentiate into specialized cells and can divide (through mitosis) to produce more healthy stem cells. Stem cells are found in organisms. They are the universal cells.
They are mother cells that have the potential to become any type of cell in the body. One of the main characteristics of stem cells is their ability to self renew or multiply while maintaining the potential to develop into other types of cells. Stem cells can become cells of the heart, kidney, liver, bones, skin, brain, muscle, etc. They have the ability to become any kind of cell in the body. They can keep renewing themselves.
These basic building blocks of life are fast becoming the ultimate repair kit of the future. Stem cells serve as a sort of internal repair system, dividing essentially without limit to replenish other cells as long as the person or animal is still alive. When a stem cell divides, each new cell has the potential either to remain a stem cell or become another type of cell with a more specialized function e. g red blood cells, brain cells, muscle cells, etc.
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History of Cotonou, Benin Republic
Amazing History of Cotonou in a Glance: Trip to Cotonou Benin Republic, what you must know about Cotonou the Business capital of Benin Republic
Cotonou is the commercial –hub city of Benin Republic, a French-speaking country in West Africa, south of the Atlantic. It is a cosmopolitan city with a sizeable number of residents as foreigners in the city. It has a well–structured network of roads built up to international standards comparable to any modern roads in the world today. The city has been in existence since 1845 being a French colony of West Africa-formerly called Dahomey.
The natives of Cotonou, Benin republic comprise mostly the Egun tribes that also occupy Seme and Badagry on the outskirts of Lagos Nigeria. Nigerians top the list of foreigners in the Cotonou smartly and strategically conducting business by using their port’s facilities. Additional Nationalities comprise; both the Chinese, Pakistanis, Lebanese, Indians, Ivoirians, Senegalese amongst a bunch of other foreigners.
The locals are warm and friendly. Their houses are not as ‘fenced’ and ‘gated’ as in Lagos –the neighboring city which is the formal capital city of Nigeria. The women are hardworking but could be loose. Men in Cotonou use like drinking a lot. Recently, the association of men with foreigners helped them a bit to be more responsible and are taking serious government duties and jobs in private establishments.
The Places Cotonou has a lot of hotels built by foreign businessmen. There are two stars to five-star hotels in the city depending on one’s tastes and income. The restaurants are plentiful and neatly arranged. It has an airport, a seaport, a stadium, and the ultramodern Tokpa market which is reputed to be the largest in the country.
There are also local and international educational institutions within and on the outskirts of the city. Roman Catholic cathedrals doth the landscape and contribute a lot to the architectural masterpiece of the city. Although, many of the people still have Voodoo as their private official Religion-one still finds Voodoo Temples here and there, which are also a great tourist attraction, if you want to see.
Cotonou is a cool place to Live or Visit I must confess, in all my travels in Africa, l can say with all confidence that Cotonou is the place that has kept to its own original city-master plan, without the need of the government coming to demolish so many illegal buildings here and there. The city is quite cool and quiet. Electricity supply is constant, thus you cannot hear the sound of a generator there.
This is unlike the neighboring city of Lagos, whereby the cacophony of noise by sounds from this device, both day and night could be deafening. As a matter of fact, noxious fumes such as carbon monoxide from these generators have been a notable cause of asphyxiation to a good number of people in this neighboring state(Lagos) but unheard of in Cotonou.
Business, commerce, and recreation are thriving in Cotonou. The port-city is where one can unwind and at the same time make good money without any stress or hassles. The crime rate is one of the lowest in the world- people hardly have gates or barbed wire fences covering their buildings.
She has for her pride, one of her own, the London-based songstress and diva, Angela Kidjo who doubles as a UNESCO Ambassador (United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization). Her pictures in Billboards adorn the city landscape also.
Conclusion Cotonou is a lesson for what urban city development should be in Africa, it is a place you feel free and would love to visit over and over again.
The Ouémé River as it flows into the Atlantic Ocean at Cotonou
Cotonou is on the coastal strip between Lake Nokoué and the Atlantic Ocean. The city split into two by a canal, the lagoon of Cotonou, by the French in 1855. Three bridges are in this area. The Ouémé River flows into the Atlantic Ocean at Cotonou.
Bridge in Cotonou
The city has established transportation infrastructure including air, sea, river (to Porto Novo), and land routes that facilitate trade with its neighbors Nigeria, Niger, Burkina Faso, and Togo.
The city took note of Coastal erosion for several decades. It worsened in 1961 following the construction of the Nangbeto Dam and the deep-water port of Cotonou. A pilot project funded by the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) revealed that in 40 years, the coast to the east of Cotonou had retreated by 400 meters.[6] This erosion has led many people to leave their homes along the coast.[7]
Under Köppen’s climate classification, Cotonou features a tropical wet and dry climate, alternating with two rainy seasons (April–July and September–October, 800 to 1,200 mm (47 in) of rain per year) and two dry seasons. In December and January, the city is affected by harmattan winds. Temperatures are relatively constant throughout the year, with the average high temperatures hovering around 30 °C (86 °F), and average low temperatures at around 25 °C (77 °F).
Autonomous Port of Cotonou
The Autonomous Port of Cotonou is one of the largest in West Africa. The city is connected to Parakou in the north by the Benin-Niger railway. Cotonou International Airport provides service to the capitals of the region and to France, as well as the major cities of Benin: Parakou, Kandi, Natitingou, Djougou, and Savé. There are road connections to neighboring countries: Nigeria, Burkina Faso, Niger, and Togo. A prevalent mode of transport in the city is the motorcycle-taxi, known locally as zémidjan.
In 2015 a suburban passenger railway line was being developed between Cotonou and Pahou.
Congress Palace of Cotonou
Important manufactured goods include palm oil, brewing, textiles, and cement. Motor vehicles and bicycles are assembled, and there are sawmills in the city. Petroleum products, bauxite, and iron are major exports. There are offshore platforms drilling for oil. The city is a center for the automotive trade, with European brands from vast open-air parking lots. In the past, Citroën assembled cars (for instance, the Citroën 2CV and Ami 8) locally.
By 2012, piracy in the Gulf of Guinea had significantly decreased trade at the port of Cotonou.
In the Missebo area is a textile market of African prints mainly handled by Indian wholesalers and retailers.
Among the places of worship, Christian churches are predominant: Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Cotonou (Catholic Church), Protestant Methodist Church in Benin (World Methodist Council), Baptist Church of Benin (Baptist World Alliance), Living Faith Church Worldwide, Redeemed Christian Church of God, Assemblies of God. There are also Muslim mosques.
Cotonou, Benin Republic inherit her educational system from the French when the country got independence on August 1, 1960. It has since undergone many reforms to make it serve the country’s needs. The system is public and secular, and consists of two years of preprimary education, six years of primary school, three years of junior secondary school, three years of senior secondary school, and a university. There are also three-year vocational or technical schools to attend in place of secondary schools.
Read more: Benin Republic top accredited universities, admission requirement to study, business and job opportunities,
https://education.stateuniversity.com/pages/160/Benin.html
The city is a host of some of the top accredited Private Universities In Benin Republic, and a campus of Leadpreneur Academy, school of Leadership and Entrepreneurship which has recorded high success graduating students for BSc, MSc, and Ph.D. both on-campus and online in affiliation with her various Partners.
Don’t hesitate to pay a visit to Cotonou whenever you come or find yourself in Benin Republic.
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Andorra is a small, mountainous country sandwiched between France and Spain.
Only 31,000 (33%) of the people living in Andorra are Andorran nationals, although this number is increasing rapidly as citizenship laws are relaxed. The next largest groups are Spanish (27,000), Portuguese (14,000), French (5,000) and British (1,000). The official language is Catalan, spoken by almost all Andorran nationals, but in view of its geographical position, most people speak French and Spanish as well. A sizeable minority also speak English.
The capital and largest city in Andorra is Andorra la Vella, which is home to 19,319 people. Andorra la Vella is also the highest capital in all of Europe. In total there are ten towns in Andorra with a population of more than 1,000 people.
Andorra Visa Education Work Permit And Living Life For Nigerians
Despite its small population, Andorra is one of the richest countries in the world. The World Bank estimated that its GDP per capita was 44,952 in 2008, making it the 16th richest country in the world. Its prosperity is built largely on its status as a tax haven and its tourist industry. The Andorran government estimates that 10.8 million tourists visited the country in 2008, and at times the number of tourists in the country dwarfs the number of residents.
More than 90% of the population is Roman Catholic. There are some other Christian denominations, a Muslim community of about 2,000 from North Africa, and small populations of Hindus.
Andorra is notable for having the 4th highest life expectancy in the world. An Andorran born today can expect to live for 82 years.
Andorra is growing at a steady pace and will continue to do so until the middle of the century. Current projections have the country reaching a maximum population of around 95,500 before beginning to decline slightly.
203
0.16% (193rd)
0.00%
164/km² (77th)
470 km²
The current population of Andorra is, based on projections of the latest United Nations data. The UN estimates the July 1, 2020 population at 77,265.
Location of Andorra
Andorra is a sovereign landlocked microstate in Southwestern Europe, located in the eastern Pyrenees mountains and bordered by Spain and France. Tourism, the mainstay of Andorra’s economy, accounts for roughly 80% of GDP. An estimated 10.2 million tourists visit annually, attracted by Andorra’s duty-free status and by its summer and winter resorts.
This list includes notable companies with primary headquarters located in the country. The industry and sector follow the Industry Classification Benchmark taxonomy. Organizations that have ceased operations are included and noted as defunct.
| Notable companies Active State-owned Defunct |
|||||
| Name | Industry | Sector | Headquarters | Founded | Notes |
| Andbank | Financials | Banks | Andorra la Vella | 1930 | Private bank |
| Andorra Telecom | Telecommunications | Fixed-line telecommunications | Santa Coloma d’Andorra | 1949 | National telecom |
| Banca Privada d’Andorra | Financials | Banks | Escaldes-Engordany | 1957 | Private bank |
| Crèdit Andorrà | Financials | Banks | Andorra la Vella | 1949 | Banking cooperative |
| Grans Magatzems Pyrénées | Consumer services | Broadline retailers | Andorra la Vella | 1930[2] | Department store |
| Mora Banc Grup | Financials | Banks | Andorra la Vella | 1956[3] | Bank |
| PGI Management | Consumer services | Recreational services | Andorra la Vella | 1957 | Ski management |
Andorra Visa Education Work Permit And Living Life For Nigerians
The cost of living in Andorra largely depends on the lifestyle and the location of the student. However, since the country is so small, the disparity in prices between locations would be almost non-existent.
Entry into Andorra is either through France or Spain. Therefore, students from non-EU countries must obtain a travel visa for either of these two countries first.
Information on how to get these visas can be obtained from the embassies of these countries near you.
Read also: List of European Countries That Make Up The Schengen Area
However, students requiring a Schengen visa must have a double or multiple entry Schengen visa that would enable them to enter Andorra. Contact the Andorran Foreign Affairs ministry for all the information you need on this.
On arrival in Andorra, all foreign students from outside the EU must apply for a student immigration permit. The International Student Service of the University would guide you on the procedure for getting this permit.
These documents would also be needed before you get a visa to travel to France or Spain.
Study abroad students can apply to the University of Andorra through their online portal. All documents required for the application, except they are in French, Spanish, English or Portuguese, must be translated to Catalan.
All the documents required for a successful application are listed on the application form. Photocopies of original documents must be verified by the awarding institution in your country.
Tuition fees at the University of Andorra depend on the program and the duration of the program. The fees are also subject to change at any time.
Read also: Low Tuition Universities in Europe
On average, international students would pay between €750 – €1,800 for undergraduate programs per semester. While postgraduate programs per semester cost between €1,800 and €3,700.
Further information on specific tuition charges for each course can be obtained from the respective faculties.
The University of Andorra offers both bachelor’s and postgraduate degrees in the following faculties
The University of Andorra provides campus housing for all students. However, this not guaranteed.
If accommodation on campus is not available, the university’s International Student Service would be on hand to assist you in getting accommodation.
Andorra Visa Education Work Permit And Living Life For Nigerians
Andorra continues a path of solid economic growth with unemployment touching a record low of 1.7%. The Andorra government presented last week their economic indicators for 2017 in terms of economic performance in Andorra. The net growth of 490 additional businesses has opened in 2017.
The growth in Andorran economic activity also translates into job growth. With an increase not only in jobs created but also overall the total amount of salaries paid it becomes clear that this growth is sustainable and points to an increase in future GDP per capita. Currently, Andorra’s GDP is matching the level of Germany and substantially higher than Spain and even France. However, there is still potential for recovery given the levels reached before the economic downturn in 2008.
The unemployment rate of 1.7% puts Andorra in a very competitive position with respect to other countries such as France at 9% and Spain at 17%. Even by international OECD standards, Andorra is taking the lead here before Japan, Germany, Switzerland, and the US.
One negative side effect has been the difficulty to find qualified staff in the country. Apparently many companies are recruiting staff through Spain and France when immigrational authorizations are required and causing delays sometimes to get people quickly into the job.
We predict further economic growth for Andorra until at least 2020 when the economy will probably face impulses of a slowdown given the outlook in Spain and France with potentially increasing interest rates and expanding consumer credit.
Located in the continent of Europe, Andorra covers 468 square kilometers of land, making it the 200th largest nation in terms of land area.
Andorra was founded as a distinct and original nation in 1278. The population of Andorra is 85,082 (2012) and the nation has a density of 182 people per square kilometer.
The currency of Andorra is the Euro (EUR). As well, the people of Andorra are referred to as Andorran.
The dialing code for the country is 376 and the top-level internet domain for Andorran sites is .ad.
Andorra shares land borders with 2 countries: France, Spain.
To learn more, visit our detailed Andorra section.
| Population | 85,082 |
| Density | 181.8 / km2 ( 470.9 / mi2 ) |
| Language | Catalan |
| Independence Year | 1278 |
| Capital | Andorra la Vella (Andorra la Vella) |
| Currency | Euro |
| GDP | 3,249,100,675 (2013 data) |
| GDP per Capita | 38,188 (2013 data) |
| Land Area | 468 km2 (181 mi2) |
| Neighbouring Country | Spain |
| Minimum Longitude | 1.788 |
| Maximum Longitude | 1.409 |
| Mininum Latitude | 42.656 |
| Maximum Latitude | 42.428 |
Andorra Visa Education Work Permit And Living Life For Nigerians
Location of Andorra la Vella on a map.
Andorra la Vella is the capital city of Andorra. It has a population of 20,430 and is located on a latitude of 42.51 and longitude of 1.52.
Andorra la Vella is also the political center of Andorra, which is considered a Constitutional Monarchy, and home to its Ceremonial head of state.
| City | Andorra la Vella |
| Country | Andorra |
| Population | 20,430 |
| Longitude | 1.52109000 |
| Latitude | 42.50779000 |
| Elevation | 1037 meters over sea level |
*Andorra Visa Education Work Permit And Living Life For Nigerians
` EDUCATION IN ANDORRA
A three system state
Given its diminutive size, it is surprising that the Principality of Andorra has three distinct schooling systems. Education is compulsory between the ages of 6 and 16, and parents can choose between the French, Andorran, or Spanish systems for their children.
In every parish, there is a primary school. Most communities have a secondary school as well as free creches for younger children, and private nurseries.
The standard of education is generally very high in Andorra. Expats can choose between three different systems: Spanish, French and Andorran. Attendance to one system compulsory until the age of 16, with home-schooling not permitted in Andorra.
During their education students will have been heavily exposed to English, French, Spanish, Catalan and Portuguese, and should have attained a decent to high level of each language.
Around half of children in Andorra attend a school that is part of the French education system. Pupils enter the system at 6 years old, with basic classes like literature, music, mathematics, French language, and art.
Each year, a further subject is added to the pupils’ curriculum. After finishing upper secondary school, children receive a diploma, with further education the usual next step.
The Spanish education centres in Andorra are managed by the government of Spain. Spanish schools consist of three different levels:
After completion, students can choose to pursue higher education in Spain.
Since there are many ex-pats in Andorra who are not from Spain or France, most place their kids in the Andorran system, due to its commitment to teaching both English and Spanish from an early age.
As the official language in Andorra, Catalan is the main language in Andorran schools. When secondary school is completed, students receive a certificate which enables them to continue to study in Andorra, although it’s also possible to continue in another European country
Many English-speaking ex-pat families send their children to Col-legi Internacional del Pirineu. To enroll, there is a one-off fee of €750 and then monthly fees of at least €670 (excluding costs for meals and transport).
As well as a multinational and multilingual environment, pupils have access to a wide variety of winter and summer sports such as skiing and golf, and many extra-curricular activity camps.
University courses in Andorra normally last 4 years. The majority of students who wish to go to university move to France or Spain. Two of the most popular university destinations for Andorrans are Toulouse and Barcelona.
The Universitat d’Andorra is the most famous University in Andorra. Although it is relatively new, it is gaining a reputation for the departments that it has – Nursing; Management, and Computer Science. It also has a virtual studies center for online courses.
The Universitat de les Valls is a private university that specializes in the field of dentistry, and the Universitat Oberta la Salle is a private, long-distance university that offers master’s degrees in business and computing.
Andorra Visa Education Work Permit And Living Life For Nigerians
Benin Republic University Accreditation Explained
A school’s accreditation status often serves as one of the most important decision-making factors for students selecting a School in Benin Republic, and rightfully so.
“Beware of false knowledge, it is more dangerous than ignorance.”
Benin Republic University Accreditation Explained
The number of people and prospective students that are misinformed about the accreditation of schools in Benin Republic is alarming.
Accreditation of Benin Republic universities is not based on the school but on the COURSES offered.
There are a good number of universities in Benin Republic, all of which are accredited to offer Certain courses; NOT all courses.
They need to understand that universities in Benin Republic are all accredited to offer mostly management, some social science, and Engineering courses. However, when it comes to Medical courses like Nursing, Pharmacy, Medical Laboratory Science and also courses like Law; Not all schools are accredited to offer them.
Though not all English private universities are directly accredited to offer courses like Pharmacy, Law, Nursing…; they offer these courses based on affiliation or a formal collaborative agreement with schools in Togo, Cameroon, Niger, and some other West African countries. This implies that students will be awarded certificates from the main affiliated Universities in these countries and not from their school in Benin Republic.
We should keep in mind that an informed minority is always more powerful than an ignorant majority.
Students shouldn’t be focused on the accreditation of a school but rather on the “Accreditation of their desired course in that school”.
BENIN REPUBLIC UNIVERSITY ACCREDITATION EXPLAINED
FACULTY OF LIBERAL ART/TRANSLATION
B.A Law
B.A Sociology
*B.A History
B.A Translation
B.A International Relations
*B.A Political Science
B.A Public Administration
B.A Mass Communication
FACULTY OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
→ Management Information System.
__ Computer engineering.
__ Petrol chemical engineering
*Bachelor of Science in Applied Sciences
Bachelor of Science in Environmental Sciences
B.Engr. Computer Engineering
B.Engr. Electronic & Electrical Engineering
FACULTY OF MANAGEMENT, BUSINESS, AND MARKETING
__ Office technology management
*Bachelor of Science (B.Sc.) in Management Studies;
Bachelor of Science (B.Sc.) in Agribusiness Management;
Higher placement can be granted to candidates with a Bachelor of Science degree, Transferred from other recognized institutions of higher education.
BENIN REPUBLIC UNIVERSITY ACCREDITATION EXPLAINED
To begin studying in the Benin Republic, there are entry requirements you will have to meet. These requirements are basic ones and are group according to level programs.
WHAT ARE THE ENTRY REQUIREMENTS FOR A BACHELOR’S DEGREE IN BENIN REPUBLIC?
A fresher beginning from 100 level will need the following before being admitted.
– O level Result [WAEC /NECO]
– Birth Certificate
– Four (4) Passport Photographs
– Admission Application Fee (10,000 Naira)
At this stage, an international passport is not necessary. Freshers can resume school without an international passport. However, it will be required before you graduate as an international student as well as for NYSC Mobilization.
Find more about the requirements for each entry-level in Benin Republic Universities
At this point, having an estimate of the tuition fee in Benin Republic Universities is also important. Find out about the tuition fee and Accommodation in Benin Republic universities.
Students also love to ask ‘How many times does Benin Republic Universities admit students? Or What the Academic Calendar is. Find out more
Download free course guide here
Relevance And Useful Links
ADMISSION REQUIREMENT
ADMISSION REQUIREMENT FOR EACH ENTRY LEVEL IN BENIN REPUBLIC : There are entry requirements for admission in Benin Republic Universities. To begin studying in Benin Republic Universities, there are entry requirements you will have to meet. These requirements are basic ones and have been grouped according to level programs.
WHAT ARE THE ENTRY REQUIREMENTS FOR A BACHELOR’S DEGREE IN BENIN REPUBLIC?
A fresher beginning from 100 level will need the following before being admitted.
– O level Result [WAEC /NECO]
– Birth Certificate
– Four (4) Passport Photographs
– Admission Application Fee (10,000 Naira)
At this stage, an international passport is not necessary. Freshers can resume school without an international passport. However, it will be required before you graduate as an international student as well as for NYSC Mobilization.
ADMISSION REQUIREMENT FOR EACH ENTRY LEVEL IN BENIN REPUBLIC
WHAT ARE THE ENTRY REQUIREMENTS FOR TRANSFER IN BENIN REPUBLIC?
Students who wish to transfer from their current of formal university to Benin Republic will need the following before being admitted.
– O level Result [WAEC /NECO]
– Birth Certificate
–Transcripts of the previous level (s)
– Four (4) Passport Photographs
– Admission Application Fee (10,000 Naira)
Sometimes, Students are faced with the challenge of not being able to get their transcripts from their current university for one reason or the other. With a student ID Card and an admission letter, an official transcript can be made for students who are unable to get their original school transcripts. This comes with a fee of 50,000 Naira
WHAT ARE THE ENTRY REQUIREMENTS FOR TOP-UP PROGRAM IN BENIN REPUBLIC?
For students with a Higher or advanced diploma degree from any recognized university or Polytechnics across the globe will need the following requirements before being admitted into the Top-Up program.
– O level Result [WAEC /NECO]
– Birth Certificate
–Diploma certificate (HND/ND/…)
– Four (4) Passport Photographs
– International Passport
– Admission Application Fee
WHAT ARE THE ENTRY REQUIREMENTS FOR A MASTER’S DEGREE IN BENIN REPUBLIC?
Students who have already acquired a Bachelor’s degree or a PGD are eligible for the Master’s program and will need to meet up with the following requirements before admission
– O’ level Result [WAEC /NECO]
– Birth Certificate
–BSc degree certificate/transcripts
– Four (4) Passport Photograph
– International Passport
– Admission Application Fee (10,000 Naira)
WHAT ARE THE ENTRY REQUIREMENTS FOR A Ph.D. PROGRAM IN BENIN REPUBLIC?
Prospective doctoral students need the following requirements to run a doctorate program in Benin Republic
– O level Result [WAEC /NECO]
– Birth Certificate
–BSc degree certificate/transcripts
–Master’s degree certificate
– Four (4) Passport Photographs
– International Passport
– Admission Application Fee (10,000 Naira)
Now that we have this out of the way, let’s find out more about the tuition fee and other important information
Benin Republic Universities Tuition Fee and accommodation
“English Universities in Benin Republic are private Institutions The Tuition Fee is affordable and accommodation is comfortable, Benin republic universities”
Benin Republic Universities Tuition Fee and accommodation
As a prospective student of any University in Benin Republic, knowing an estimate of the amount involved in studying here as well as the requirements are necessary.
The first fee to be paid is your application fee amounting to 10,000 Naira. After this payment is made and confirmed, your admission letter will be sent to your email address. After being admitted, a payment of acceptance fee which is 20,000 Naira is to be made Acknowledging and accepting the provisional admission offered to you is important.
You can pay your fees per session or installments. The Tuition fee for fresher ranges from is 180,000 in NGN to 450,000 NGN. The least fee being for distance learning. This fee range depends on a lot of factors which include: school, course, level, and mode of study. Distance learning is the most affordable compared to campus study.
The tuition fee for masters differ as well and ranges from 550,000 in NGN to 1.5 million NGN. This price range also depend on some of the factors stated above except that the Master’s program is only through distance learning.
For Campus-based students, accommodation and hostel facilities vary also. The fee ranges from 100,000 Naira – 150,000 Naira per session. However, hostel accommodation is not compulsory and not all schools have a hostel for students. A student who prefers to stay alone is free to rent an apartment close to school. A well-tiled apartment (room self-contained) is about 17,000 Naira a month for rent, excluding light and water bills.
Benin Republic Universities Tuition Fee and accommodation- English Universities in Benin Republic are private Institutions The Tuition Fee is affordable.
For Undergraduate Campus-based students, accommodation and hostel facilities vary also. The fee ranges from 100,000 Naira – 150,000 Naira per session. However, hostel accommodation is not compulsory and not all schools have a hostel for students. A student who prefers to stay alone is free to rent an apartment close to school. A well-tiled apartment (room self-contained) is about 25,000 CFA (17,000 Naira) or more a month for rent, excluding light and water bills.
Renting an apartment here most times entails paying 3 months caution and 3 months advance rent which makes a total of 6 months rent. So basically, the 3 months rent caution you pay is like a deposit held by the Landlord or caretaker which will be refunded to you whenever you plan to move out, provided you did not damage any house property and you’re not owing rent. The 3 months advanced will expire after the first 3 months you spend in the apartment; after which you’ll have to begin paying your rents monthly.
Houses in the Benin Republic come with the convenience of a light and water meter for each apartment. A wonderful fact about the Benin Republic is that Light and water provision is very stable. However, to enjoy such conveniences, pay your bills every month because it is quite hard to pay if one doesn’t manage the consumption adequately.
Aside from the rent caution, light and water caution fee is also unavoidable when renting an apartment. This ranges from 10,000 CFA – 25,000 CFA each (6,000 Naira – 15,000 Naira). Some apartments have a prepaid light meter and therefore will not be needing any caution fee. Just like the rent caution fee, the light and water caution fee will be refunded, provided you are not owing any bills whenever you decide to move out.
The above analysis is for a simple incomplete apartment. Students will have to buy a mattress, fan, table, chair or whatever household furniture they might need.
A furnished apartment is luxurious and will definitely cost much more; within the range of 100,000 CFA – 200,000 CFA (60,000 Naira-125,000 Naira )
In summary, renting an apartment is quite expensive when you compare them to a hostel.
ADMISSION IS ON NOW. To begin studying in the Benin Republic, there are entry requirements you will have to meet. These requirements are basic ones and have been grouped according to level programs. That is for B.SC, Transfer, Masters, Top-Up, and Ph.D.
As a prospective student of the Benin Republic, knowing an estimate of the amount involved in studying here is necessary. English Universities in the Benin Republic are private. The Tuition Fee is more affordable when you compare to private universities in Nigeria. The first fee you are to pay is … find out more
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7 True values and Benefits of online Education – E-learning
While there are all kinds of benefits that are associated with learning and furthering your educational goals there are even more benefits to those who wish to pursue online learning in order to achieve those goals. I hope you will find that many of these benefits are quite enlightening and carefully consider whether or not online learning for your secondary education needs will be in your best interests.
We live in a fast-paced world and when we can work education into our busy schedules and on our own terms we find that this is something we tend to like a lot.
I recommend that you watch for a growing number of online classes and online students in the coming years as more and more professionals decide to further their degrees and their careers.
You can take these classes or do the work during your lunch break, while the kids are practicing soccer, or while cooking dinner (depending of course on how well you multitask). You do not need to be in the classroom every night at 6:00 pm for the next five years in order to get the same degree of education.
This by no means indicates that you will not have to do the work. The work will not change nor will the fact that you have a limited time in which to complete the work. What will change is that you will have the option of doing the work in the morning, afternoon, or during those 2 a.m. feeling when you can’t seem to get back to sleep.
It’s no secret that traditional universities cost a lot of money. You pay for classes, hostel accommodation, transportation here and there, massive textbooks, handouts and so much more.
Online courses cut out all these exorbitant expenditures because there will be no need for transportation, hostel accommodations, and study material are readily available at little or no costs at all. The fact that online courses are cheaper when compared to the once that are held in a traditional campus is enough to convince you to consider them.
Forget about attending classes for hours, sitting in an uncomfortable chair, and suffering from back pain by the end of the day. You will not be bound to a physical class session when you opt for online education. All lectures and needed materials are provided via online platforms. So, you’ll easily access them from the comfort of your home.
*7 True values and Benefits of online Education – E-learning – We live in a fast-paced world and when we can work education into our busy schedules and on our own terms we find that this is something we tend to like a lot.
Comfort is a strong advantage; however, it can go both ways if misused. You mustn’t allow yourself to get too comfortable when studying from home. So, it would be best to abandon the couch or bed for a few hours a day and set up an inspirational studying environment in your home. All you need is a large desk, a laptop, some writing materials, and a nice comfortable chair
let’s assume you got admitted to a normal university. After the excitement of getting admission disappears, you’ll be faced with so much stress from running around with documents from one department and faculty to the other to process paperwork, hostel application, long nerve-racking queues at the bank, ATM stand,s and even to get on a bus or taxi.
But, with online degrees, you don’t have to worry about anything: apply online, get accepted and you’re done!
Honestly, doesn’t this sound like the best and easiest way to start a degree?
After all, it can be difficult to juggle the demand for school and work simultaneously. But if you organize your self and have self-discipline, it is often possible to do both.
Because you don’t have to attend class at a specific time, you can fulfill the functions of your job and study during your free time. You can also use weekends to get additional work done that you didn’t have time for during the week. Yes, it’s demanding and it’s a lot of work. But if you want to keep working while getting a degree. You can make it happen with online classes.
There isn’t enough that can really be said about this. Online education comes to you wherever you happen to be able to connect to the Internet; whether you are at home, at work, or your favorite Internet café. Unlike traditional universities where you have to receive lectures at a particular time, in a particular location. An online class is a take-along-with-you class.
Online classes aren’t for everybody. Some people just want the tried-and-true traditional classroom. But online classes offer some really unique benefits. These benefits allow people who might not normally be able to get a degree to attend college.
With discipline and purpose, online classes are a fantastic option.
7 True values and Benefits of online Education -E-learning
ADVANTAGES OF STUDYING IN BENIN REPUBLIC
Studying abroad is a global phenomenon, with students crossing countries, Continents, and Oceans to get the best education possible. But why has choosing a University destination in Benin Republic become so popular?
If you have ever thought of studying outside your country, and you probably considered studying in the Benin Republic. You might have felt uncertain, doubtful, and even scared about it. Don’t worry, you are not alone.
Going to another country for your studies is a huge step! and probably one of the most important life decisions you’ll make. Because this decision plays a big role in your future, you might still need some convincing and a bit of support.
Discussed below, are 6 reasons why the Benin Republic should be your destination for studies
Four or five years is a long time to be in school. The traditional bachelor’s degree takes at least four years to complete. But we have accelerated the program to let you complete your B.Sc. in far less time. Most times under 3 years- depending on the course you study
If you are looking for a fast and quality degree program, this is where you need to be. The fact that we do not dwell on irrelevant theoretical teachings but focus on relevant topics, saves us a lot of time and resources.
Most arts and social science courses can be completed within 3 years or less. Engineering and medical courses will take 4 years for completion. The summer programs have made it even faster for students.
Another greater, faster, and more convenient way of getting your degree is the distance learning programs. It costs lesser than on-campus study and makes you study at your own pace but It all depends on how disciplined and willing you are to go full in.
Students should not be subjected to spending over half a decade in school. Finish school faster and get on with “Real life” sooner.
ADVANTAGES OF STUDYING IN BENIN REPUBLIC
The Academic curriculum in most of Africa’s educational institutions – from primary to tertiary is older than the countries themselves. They were passed down by the British colonial masters over 60 years ago.
The British have moved on to change their curriculum with current and practical content which has ensured the production of innovative and highly creative graduates. Back here in Nigeria to be specific there is an over-reliance on paper qualification as opposed to the skills and can-do attitude of an individual.
The die-hard old lecturers are still taking students through long boring theoretical lectures, and shoving old rusty textbooks down their throats for them to cram.
Why would somebody who studied Banking and finance go through several months of training before being employed at a bank? What was that individual studying in school for the last 4-5 years?
Most worrisome is the fact that a person graduates from school and realizes that 99% of what was studied in school is no longer relevant in the real world today. The outdated curriculum has made it difficult for these graduates to be employable and therefore requires that they are retrained to fit into various organizations.
The knowledge passed across to students is tantamount to a waste of time and resources, because knowledge attained through an obsolete or archaic curriculum is not valued in this present era.
Here in the Benin Republic, we have redesigned a quality curriculum and practical way of teaching. Our lecturers have been trained and are still being trained from time to time to meet up with the current events and innovations in the global arena.
Quality education produces quality individuals who will thrive and confidently stand shoulder to shoulder with other people, anywhere they find themselves. They will not only be out seeking for employment but they will create employment themselves.
ADVANTAGES OF STUDYING IN BENIN REPUBLIC
Remember the foreign Language Skills you picked up in Secondary School? No. Refresh them by studying abroad; You might be surprised at how much you remember, You may have learned French from Song lyrics and movies, or you may have studied the main grammar and vocabulary during school, but you will always have to use it in real – life Situations and Interactions.
Just think how many new things you will learn after talking, Studying, and taking an exam in French: Famous Phrase, quotes, or even curse words (but we are not encouraging that!) Plus, you can also improve your Language more formally by taking a professional French program and be awarded a certificate.
Since French is such a universally used Language, it can be quite advantageous to study in a country such as the Benin Republic. You will be able to study in English, learn French, and really develop your language skills.
You will be exposed to the various interesting cultures of the Beninese and also visit a lot of exciting places.
There are certain courses that most Nigerian universities do not offer or do not teach effectively. These courses are hot-cake and what people have used to build a lifelong dream career. They are Music, performing arts, Linguistics, Mass Communication, Marketing, International relations, Software Engineering- just to name a few.
As usual, most schools just deal with the history, irrelevant and theoretical aspects of these courses with little or no practice.
For instance, a student who studied mass communication should be able to communicate news and message to the public at large, accurately and effectively as the course implies but this is not the case for most students who spend years with their heads buried in Textbooks.
Here, you will learn strong public speaking and presentation skills. You will know how to write well, speak with confidence, carry out dialogues, and craft convincing arguments.
There is even an opportunity for you to enroll and acquire ‘hard skills’ like videography, photography, and graphics which all aim at you being the best all-round in your field. The mass communication and media industries are on the lookout of people who possess these professional skills.
A marketing student will learn about psychology, human behavior, the art of persuasion and communication. The student will be exposed to various ways of effective advertisement and creating brand awareness.
In a nutshell, there is a complete implementation of the practical aspects and strategies of these courses, equipping students for the real world.
There is nothing quite like being on your own in a foreign country. You might find that studying abroad brings out your independent nature. Students who study abroad become explorers of their new nature and really discover the curiosity and excitement that they harbor.
A benefit to studying abroad is the opportunity to discover yourself while gaining and understanding of a different culture. Being in a place by yourself can be overwhelming and even difficult at times, and it tests your ability to adapt to diverse situations while being able to solve problems.
However, you will learn how to be independent and mature, and you will become more confident and grow as a person.
The biggest reason you should consider studying in a foreign country is the opportunity to see the world. By studying abroad, you will experience a brand-new country
For most students, this time may be the only opportunity to travel abroad for a long period of time, eventually, you will get a job, build a family and career and the opportunity to study abroad may turn out to be a once in a lifetime opportunity
Take this opportunity to travel the world with no commitments but to study, meet people, and learn new things.
With Nigeria as a case study; there are millions of Nigerians that have never and might never be able to cross the borders of Nigeria into another country. You having that opportunity is huge and you should make good use of it.
In addition, you’ll be a step closer to visiting neighboring counties like Togo, Ghana, Niger, and Burkina Faso.
ADVANTAGES OF STUDYING IN BENIN REPUBLIC
When you think about school and the experience, you’ll have there, you probably think about learning, growing, and expanding your mind and knowledge. But one thing you should also think about are the meaningful and strong relationships and friendships you will form in and outside the classroom
No matter where you go to university, you are sure to meet a lot of new people and make new friends who are all in the same position as you.
You will learn to work with a team, to collaborate with others, as well as how you get along with managers! and supervisors. Learning to get along with people especially ones from different countries and cultures improves your people-skills and this is an indispensable soft skill that you’ll need in whatever field you’re in
And, as a plus, by making international friends, you will have additional reasons to travel and around the world.
Many life friendships start at University. It can also be hugely beneficial to know people in different countries around the world especially after you graduate, for connections and job opportunities!
On the other hand, Benin Republic is one the most stable and safe country in West Africa
Despite these advantages, students who come to study in the Benin Republic with a blind-eye might face huge setbacks! and regret if they fall into the wrong hands.
As many universities are in the Benin Republic! there are a good number of them that are yet to experience accreditation to offer certain courses. Even some are not recognized or accredited to offer any course at all.
Students ignorantly walk into such institutions, spend their time and money before realizing they are in the wrong place. The repetition of such incidences has brought harm to the reputation of accredited Benin Republic Universities. Many people believe that all schools in the Benin Republic are yet to experience accreditation.
*ADVANTAGES OF STUDYING IN BENIN REPUBLIC
This is what inspired the creation of Beninfo247! the No 1 educational consultancy firm, and the informational portal in the Whole of Benin Republic. Dedicated to counseling and orienting students on the best-accredited schools to go to for their desired course of study. Not only are we interested in getting students settled in and comfortable while studying, but we have also initiated part payments scholarship programs to enable convenience and affordability for more students.
We can proudly say that we are the number one go-to for any student who aspires to study in the Benin Republic. We’ll walk hand in hand with you! every step of the way, from the start to the finish of your program.
One cannot overemphasize the benefits of studying in the Benin Republic and it out ways the drawbacks. It is probably going to be a bumpy ride but here is a promise! it’s going to be the ride of your lifetime.
The Rise of Online Education in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia
Online education is a divisive topic. Often criticized as an inferior form of education providing an isolated learning experience at best, or as a harbinger of global, Western-dominated educational homogenization at worst, online education is simultaneously considered a promising means to increase access to education in developing countries.
Current trends in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia illustrate that online education is gaining traction in these regions despite persistent technological barriers—not because it is a better form of learning, but because it is perceived as a rational, cost-effective means to widen educational opportunities. Escalating population growth and exploding demand for education are causing countries like India to increasingly embrace online education. While still embryonic, digital forms of education will likely eventually be pursued in the same vein as traditional distance learning models and the privatization of education, both of which have helped increase access to education despite concerns over educational quality and social equality.
Education systems in sub-Saharan Africa and other developing regions are in crisis. To mention just one of many problems, UNESCO estimates that one in five children worldwide did not participate in any form of education in 2016. Almost all of these 263 million children—6 to 17 years of age—lived in developing countries. Yet, this crisis could get even worse. Africa’s youth population is expected to double to 830 million people by 2050, but few resources are dedicated to educating these young people.
Against this backdrop, online education is getting increased attention as a possible solution to widen access to education at an affordable cost. Bill Gates, the co-founder of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and principal founder of Microsoft, for instance, believes that online learning will revolutionize education in the developing world and help close global literacy gaps.
In fact, distance education already plays a crucial role in providing access to education for millions of people in the developing world. Open distance education universities in Bangladesh, India, Iran, Pakistan, South Africa, and Turkey alone currently enroll more than 7 million students combined. Many of these mass providers are increasingly going digital, while more recent forms of e-learning like massive open online courses (MOOCs) are also proliferating.
In many developing regions, participation in online education is still constrained by technological infrastructure barriers, commonly called the digital divide. However, the rapid spread of smartphones has turned digital learning into a much more viable proposition in recent years. Mobile broadband technology is quickly penetrating even remote rural regions, providing Internet access to the people that live there.
Cash-strapped governments in low-income countries are thus increasingly looking to online education as an option to bridge capacity gaps. Compared to building ever-more brick-and-mortar institutions, digital learning promises a cheaper and more instantaneous remedy. Whether or not online education can live up to this promise remains to be seen. However, the growth potential for online education in developing countries is certainly enormous. Some observers consider Africa “the most dynamic e-learning market on the planet.”
This article describes trends in the distance and online higher education in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) and the Indian subcontinent in the context of global growth in digital learning. To grasp the sheer magnitude of the learning crisis in these regions and to understand why online education could be so revolutionary, we will first outline mounting demographic pressures and capacity problems, as well as upsurges in privatization and open and distance learning (ODL). We will then describe the current spread of digital education and technological advances in SSA and South Asia, and discuss online education as a means of expanding capacity.
The takeaway is that distance education and digital learning will continue to expand quickly in SSA and the Indian subcontinent. Digital education models are unlikely to substitute for traditional research universities or form the bedrock of world-class education systems. However, online education will play an important supplementary role similar to the role distance learning universities have already played for decades.
more on “The Rise of Online Education in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia: mass education”
The objective of mass-scale distance education in countries like India is not the cultivation of academic elites, but the cost-effective delivery of education to deprived populations. Online education, similarly, could provide learning opportunities for tens of millions of people and throw disadvantaged countries a lifeline in their quest to broaden access to education. In light of the exploding demand, every ounce of capacity counts.
Digital education is flourishing. The number of MOOCs, for example, has skyrocketed since they first appeared in the 2000s. MOOCs are now mainstream, and the number of available courses was reported in 2016 to be growing daily.
The New York Times declared 2012 “the year of the MOOC”—an acronym that was, at the time, still an unfamiliar term. Since then, the number of MOOCs has increased by more than 683 percent: According to Class Central, a MOOC listings provider, there are now 9,400 courses on offer worldwide compared with only 1,200 MOOCs in 2013, while the total number of learners enrolled in MOOCs has shot up to 81 million from 10 million. Most MOOCs are offered directly by private providers like Coursera or edX, but the number of universities offering MOOCs has also increased from 200 to 800.
The Rise of Online Education in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia
As the e-learning market evolves, it is also becoming increasingly complex and diversified. Current offerings are trending toward audited short-term certificates (so-called micro-credentials or nano degrees), as well as “stackable” degree programs in which learners earn an academic credential by completing a self-paced sequence of MOOC certificates that can later be applied toward a degree.
However, more traditionally structured online programs are booming as well. In the United States, it is now commonplace for established universities to offer online degree programs. Fully 6.36 million higher education students (31.6 percent of all college students) took at least one online course in 2016. About half of these students studied exclusively online. In addition, U.S. companies are increasingly using e-learning to train their employees.
Most market researchers expect the global e-learning market to grow at brisk annual rates anywhere between 7 percent and 10 percent over the coming years. In a recent report, Research and Markets project that the global market volume will increase from USD$159.5 billion in 2017 to USD$286.6 billion in 2023, while other researchers predict that the e-learning market will reach USD$331 billion by 2025.
Over the past years, many different terms have been coined for learning and teaching that takes place primarily over the Internet. Students access course materials or class lectures on mobile phones, tablets, and—less often in developing regions—on laptops or computers. While students in some cases access digital learning materials on pre-loaded laptops or mobile devices while simultaneously attending classes at a school, most of this type of education is delivered remotely over the Internet. Terms used largely synonymously include digital learning, digital education, online education, and electronic learning or e-learning. “M-learning” specifically refers to education delivered via mobile phones.
Blended learning usually refers to remote learning programs that are supplemented with traditional in-person lectures, classes, or study groups, as well as access to physical educational resources such as libraries. Many experts consider the blended or hybrid approach the most effective model of remote learning.
Distance learning or distance education generically refers to any kind of remote learning, but it also has a specific meaning and history that started long before the Internet revolution. These terms often refer to structured programs offered remotely to students. They started originally as correspondence courses; many are now delivered completely or primarily online.
The terms“open” and “open-access” providers refer to higher education institutions that accept all or most students who have earned a high school credential or its equivalent. Not all open institutions offer distance learning; and not all distance learning programs are open.
MOOCs (massive open online courses) are called “massive” and “open” because they typically don’t have formal admission requirements and can be attended by thousands of students at the same time. While many of these courses were initially free of charge, they are now becoming increasingly monetized. Initially offered by private U.S. providers like Coursera or edX, they are now frequently licensed to higher education institutions, some of which have also begun to develop their own MOOCs.
Digital learning is still predominantly used in industrialized countries. Most students enrolled in MOOCs, for instance, are postgraduate students in high-income countries seeking to upgrade their skills. Overseas students enrolled in online courses offered by U.S. universities made up only 0.7 percent in 2016.
That said, developing countries are catching up fast—despite the fact that courses offered by U.S. providers like Coursera or Udacity are getting increasingly expensive.[1] India quickly became Coursera’s second-largest user market (after the U.S.). The number of Indians enrolled in Coursera MOOCs jumped by 70 percent between 2015 and 2016 alone. By 2017, Coursera’s Indian user base had reached 2 million, making up about 7.7 percent of all enrollments worldwide.
The number of students from developing nations enrolling in online degree programs in industrialized countries is also growing. Between 2011 and 2015/16, the number of South African students enrolled in U.K. online degree programs, for instance, increased by 135 percent. Despite rising costs for online programs, earning a degree online is still cheaper than studying overseas. The number of Nigerian students in online degree programs based in the United Kingdom is sizable: 5,252 in 2015/16.
These developments suggest a growing demand for products like online degrees and MOOCs. In all probability, local institutions in developing countries will, over time, increasingly compete with Western providers over absorbing this demand. The e-learning landscape in developing countries is set to evolve dramatically as local private providers, public universities, and governments all push into this dynamic market segment.
Digital learning in regions like SSA and South Asia is embryonic and bound to accelerate. At a time when the industrialized world has entered what scholars call a post-massification era[2], the growth potential for all forms of education is still gargantuan in these regions. While Europe and North America achieved an average tertiary gross enrollment ratio (GER) of 75 percent in 2015, tertiary GERs in South Asia and SSA stood at only 25 percent and 8 percent.
What makes online education increasingly attractive in SSA and South Asia is the fact that many countries there cannot follow traditional approaches to massification. These regions face nearly insurmountable challenges to achieving participation rates anywhere near those found in Europe and North America.
Crucially, population growth in these regions will generate a crushing demand for education. As industrialized countries in Europe and East Asia are aging, the population of Africa alone is expected to double by 2050. By 2030, cities like Lagos and Kinshasa are projected to have more than 20 million inhabitants, most of them youngsters. Fully 40 percent of the population on the African continent is now under the age of 15, and the youth population (15- to 24-year-olds) is expected to increase even further—by 42 percent by 2030.
Demographic projections at the country level are stunning: Nigeria’s population will double to about 400 million by 2050, turning the West African country into the third largest nation on earth. In neighboring Niger, the youth population is projected to increase by 92 percent between 2015 and 2030 alone. The country was said to gain about 800,000 people annually until 2016. If its birth rates don’t decline, Niger’s population could possibly mushroom to 960 million people by 2100 (compared with 22.3 million today).
The Rise of Online Education in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia
India, meanwhile, will within the next seven years surpass China as the largest nation on earth and grow to about 1.5 billion people by 2030 (up from 1.34 billion in 2017). No other country today has a total youth population greater than India’s: 600 million people in the country are under the age of 25.
The situation in other South Asian countries is similar. Bangladesh, Nepal, and Pakistan are currently experiencing a “youth bulge.” Pakistan now has the highest percentage of young people ever recorded in its history—64 percent of the population is below the age of 30. By 2050, Karachi is projected to become the third-largest city in the world with 31.7 million people.
In the long term, these demographic trends could be beneficial. Economists often consider youth bulging a positive phenomenon, a demographic dividend rewarding countries with a young labor force and opportunities for development. But the demographic dividend is not simply a demographic gift. Turning youth bulging into economic growth requires that countries educate their growing youth cohorts and provide them with employment opportunities.
Countries in SSA and South Asia are struggling to do just that. The youth unemployment rate in SSA stands at 14.2 percent, while Nepali youth deem prospects for employment so dire that not less than 28 percent of the country’s labor force is employed abroad. In India, hundreds of thousands of labor migrants leave the country each year.
The demand for education won’t be curbed by economic growth. Perhaps more so than sheer population growth per se, it will be increased prosperity and the concomitant purchasing power of middle classes that will drive the demand for education. India’s economy is growing fast, and the size of its middle class is expanding at high velocity. The number of people in middle-income brackets is expected to increase almost 10-fold within two decades, from 50 million people in 2010 to 475 million people in 2030. Some analysts predict that the country will become the world’s second-largest economy by 2050. In Bangladesh, meanwhile, an estimated 30 million to 40 million people will join the ranks of the middle class by 2025.
These are statistics to watch, as they could be transformative. In China, rising incomes fueled a drastic increase in education participation. Over the last two decades, the number of Chinese university graduates grew 10-fold, while China’s education system became the world’s largest with 43.9 million tertiary students in 2016. If South Asia follows China’s example, the demand for education in the region will shatter ceilings.
In Africa, wealth accumulation happens on a smaller scale, but the middle class is growing nonetheless, notably in the continent’s fast-sprawling cities. One recent study by the consulting firm EIU Can back, a sister company of The Economist magazine, estimated that Africa’s middle class had grown modestly from 4.4 percent in 2004 to 6.2 percent in 2014.[3] At any rate, the sheer number of upcoming youngsters in Africa will likely weigh down the hopes they have of attaining their educational aspirations—and those of their countries’ leaders for them.
Youth bulging makes it increasingly difficult for SSA and South Asian countries to address capacity shortages by building or expanding universities. Over the past two decades, India has already created capacity for a gargantuan 30 million students. The tertiary student population increased sixfold, from 5.7 million in 1996 to an estimated 36.6 million in 2017/18. The number of universities, likewise, grew from 190 in 1990/91 to 903 in 2017/18, while the number of colleges literally exploded: 18,000 new colleges were established between 2008 and 2016 alone—that’s more than six new colleges per day.
Despite this massive expansion, supply in India keeps trailing demand. The country is expected to soon harbor the largest tertiary-age population in the world while still having a higher education GER of only 25.8 percent (2017/18). The government seeks to increase the GER to 30 percent by 2020—an objective that would require adding more than 4 million additional university seats within the next two years.[4] Recent studies estimate that an additional 700 universities and 35,000 colleges will need to be built to keep up with demographic trends.
Even if India’s mushrooming private sector could absorb much of this exploding demand, India is ill-equipped to handle an expansion of this scale: Education spending currently stands at less than 3 percent of GDP nationwide (below levels of 2012/13), and generating additional funds will not be easy. Insufficient capacity is just one of the Indian education system’s many problems, which range from teacher shortages to quality problems and abysmal unemployment rates among university graduates.
To sum up, the Indian system is severely overburdened. As the British Council has noted, “… the change coming to South Asia cannot be embraced by expanding an existing system, it demands a new approach to the academic model, to quality, and to funding. Failure to find new solutions and to meet the demographic demand for high-quality accessible education will see the region locked into a spiral of low-value skills and even higher graduate unemployment.”
Academic Exclusion in Sub-Saharan Africa
The situation in SSA is even worse. While enrollment rates have gone up over the decades, a majority of Africans remain excluded from higher education. According to a recent World Bank study, the “increasing demand and limited supply of tertiary education in the SSA region has led to tertiary education being available only to a subset of the youth population. … To date, tertiary education in the SSA region has remained elitist, benefiting students mostly from the most affluent, well-connected families… [T]ertiary education in the region is not equitably producing the human capital that the countries direly need.”
This crisis comes amid the construction of ever more higher education institutions (HEIs). Between 1990 and 2014, the number of public universities in SSA grew from 100 to 500, while the number of private HEIs skyrocketed from 30 to more than 1,000. In Kenya, a country that had only four universities in 1989, the number of universities recently more than doubled within just six years, from 33 in 2012 to 73 today.
That said, Nigeria could possibly top that expansion soon. The country’s National University Commission is currently processing accreditation applications from 292 new institutions, a development that could nearly triple the number of Nigerian HEIs. In another example, Ethiopia reportedly had only two public universities and six colleges that in total had the capacity to enroll 10,000 students in 1991. By 2014/15, the country had 36 public HEIs, while the number of private institutions jumped from zero to more than 100.
These new universities have greatly expanded access, but they are—all together—but a drop in the bucket, given the mounting demand. In 2014, there was just one HEI for about 652,000 people in SSA. Compare that with the U.S., which has one accredited degree-granting institution per 67,435 people.[5] In nations like Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country, this ratio is as high as one university for 1.2 million people, more than half of whom are below the age of 30.
Present capacity shortages in Nigeria are so severe that less than 40 percent of university applicants gain admission, effectively locking out one million aspiring students each year. In light of such need, Kevin Andrews, vice-chancellor of the pan-African UNICAF University, noted in a recent interview with Times Higher Education that “Africa would need to build 10 universities a week, [with] each [one enrolling] 10,000 students every week for the next 12 years” in order to keep up with demand.
Even if that were possible, constructing ever-more universities is of limited use if governments cannot adequately fund them. Many education systems in the region are already chronically underfunded—a situation that will only worsen as systems expand and become increasingly expensive to manage. More than half of Kenya’s public universities, for instance, are presently insolvent as the government is cutting funding on various fronts. Funding problems are omnipresent in SSA, despite the fact that governments spend relatively large parts of their budget on education by international comparison. The average public debt as a share of GDP in SSA has increased by about 15 percent between 2011 and 2017, according to the IMF.
Given such resource shortages, it is unsurprising that rapid privatization is underway in many education systems. Privatization affords governments an opportunity to appease popular demand for education while externalizing the costs. While unfettered privatization is not a reality across all developing countries, tertiary private sector enrollments in Africa, for instance, have grown twice as fast as public enrollments between 2008 and 2013. One in four African students is expected to study at a private school by 2021 (at all levels of education, compared with 21 percent today ).
This trend is well described in UNESCO’s current Global Education Monitoring Report, which notes that “the share of private institutions in tertiary enrolment is growing rapidly in low- and middle-income countries. In Nepal, it grew by 38 percentage points between 2000 and 2015, followed closely by Burundi and Rwanda, where private institutions now account for two in three students. In Congo, one in three students attended a private university or college in 2015, up from close to zero in 2000.”
Developments in India are similar: The number of private universities has in recent years grown at an estimated rate of 40 percent annually. In 2014, the private sector accounted for 64 percent of institutions and 59 percent of all tertiary enrollments.
The Rise of Online Education in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia
Private education can play a crucial role in increasing access. Low-cost private elementary schools, for example, help educate millions of children in Africa and South Asia, often in the most marginalized neighborhoods. In Lagos alone, more than 18,000 low-cost private schools have sprung up since 2010, drastically boosting capacity in a city that previously had only 1,600 public schools. Private HEIs, meanwhile, often have lower admission standards than those of competitive state universities, enabling students locked out of the public system to attend university.
Beyond absorbing demand, well-managed private institutions may provide better education more geared toward employment than that of cash-strapped public institutions. Private schools also tend to be more responsive to industry needs and can act as agents of change. As African academics Wondwosen Tamrat and Damtew Teferra have emphasized, “[private] universities infuse competitiveness due to their dynamic and entrepreneurial features. In 1990, South Africa had only five MBA programs offered by public providers serving around 1,000 students, but because of competition from private institutions, the number of providers grew to 40 and MBA enrollment to 15,000 within a decade.”
At the same time, many private HEIs in developing regions are small niche providers that can neither compete with big public institutions nor absorb large numbers of students. Privatization has also led to a mushrooming of low-quality for-profit institutions and unlicensed providers that deliver substandard education and award credentials of little value.
In some countries, this situation has spiraled so far out of control that governments now increasingly police the spread of such fly-by-night providers. In India, for instance, thousands of these small, private “mushroom schools” that had sprung up all over the country have been shut down since 2009.
Quality audits and school closures are becoming increasingly common in Africa as well. In one recent example, in 2017 Zimbabwe shut down 280 private colleges. However, many African governments struggle to keep up with the wave of private “teaching shops” flooding their countries. Rigorous quality control mechanisms will be needed to keep this ballooning private sector under control and protect students from substandard, predatory providers.
There are also valid concerns that private education worsens the exclusion of poorer social segments and widens disparities in access to education. A recent World Bank study, for instance, has shown that private-led growth in several African countries disproportionally benefited wealthier households and reinforced social inequalities.
Despite such problems, private education will inevitably continue to thrive, since governments don’t have the capacity to cope with exploding demand. And privatization can certainly help mitigate capacity gaps and advance quality in education systems, as long as it is implemented under adequate oversight.
The British Council recommends that governments in South Asia cultivate “… a cohort of credible private-sector universities renowned for excellence, with targeted funding and scholarships to facilitate access[.This] has proven a successful strategy elsewhere in Asia and in South Asia [and] … will need to take place in tandem with efforts to improve regulation and quality assurance in the private sector.”
Next to privatization, distance education has been pursued as a means of expanding access for quite some time. In fact, distance education existed long before the Internet revolution. Since the 19th century, universities in the U.S. and Britain offered distance education in the form of correspondence courses.
In tandem with technological progress, distance learning began to incorporate radio broadcasts, TV programs, and audio- and videocassettes. In 1953, the University of Houston in Texas was the first university to televise course materials. Britain’s Open University then took this concept to larger audiences when in 1971 it started to broadcast teaching materials on the BBC. It is now the largest university in Western Europe with 173,927 students (2016/17), most of whom attend remotely.
The model of the Open University has been emulated with great success in developing countries, giving rise to several mega universities. India was among the early adopters when in 1985 it established the Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU). Dubbed “the People’s University,” IGNOU is designed to provide “higher education to a large cross-section of people, in particular the disadvantaged segments of society.”
While IGNOU may not feature in global university rankings, it needs to be regarded as one of the world’s most important HEIs because of its sheer size. IGNOU’s student population today exceeds three million, having shot up from 4,528 in 1987, making it the largest university on the globe by most accounts, although the Open University of China may now be even larger.[6]
IGNOU inspired the creation of other open universities in many Indian states and led to the establishment of a Distance Education Council (DEC) that it oversaw. The DEC provided quality assurance for distance education nationwide until that function was transferred to a newly established Distance Education Bureau in 2013.
Distance education has played an important role in absorbing demand in India and currently accounts for 11.45 percent of higher education enrollments. Many of India’s traditional universities now offer distance education programs. The total number of institutions offering distance learning programs increased from one in 1962 to 256 in 2010.
IGNOU delivers education by “providing print materials, [audio- and videotapes], broadcast on radio and … TV channels, teleconferencing, video conferencing [and] also … face to face counseling, at its study centers.” Since 2000, the institution is increasingly using the Internet to distribute teaching materials.
Technological advances have increased the speed and ease of distance teaching and fueled IGNOU’s ambitions to establish itself as a global virtual university. Notably, the Indian government’s 2004 launch of the world’s first satellite dedicated exclusively to distance education (EduSat) has greatly expanded IGNOU’s capacity to deliver digital content. However, IGNOU still maintains a hybrid learning model that enables students to receive tutoring at nearly 3,000 learner support centers throughout India and at 12 centers overseas.
Growing demand has fueled similar developments in other countries. Iran, for example, underwent a youth bulge phase over the past two decades that doubled the population between 1980 and 2016. The effects were the same as in SSA and South Asia today: exploding demand, insufficient capacity, more HEIs, and a mushrooming private sector. One answer to this crisis was the establishment of Payam-e-Nour University (PNU), an institution that is now the largest distance education provider in the country with more than 940,000 students.
PNU has proved effective in absorbing demand, despite sometimes being criticized for delivering low-quality education. Under the motto “education for all, anywhere and anytime,” PNU has helped to increase enrollment rates even in Iran’s most remote regions. PNU offers traditional distance education programs, hybrid (blended) programs that include optional in-class tutoring, and—since 2006—e-learning programs offered exclusively online. According to PNU’s website, the number of enrollments in pure online programs, however, is still small at fewer than 10,000 students.
The Rise of Online Education in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia
These are several examples that illustrate that government-sponsored open and distance learning (ODL) is growing in size and scope in various countries. In Pakistan, the Allama Iqbal Open University, a public ODL provider designed to “provide education and training to people who cannot leave their homes and jobs for full-time studies,” is now the largest university in the country with an average annual enrollment of 1.2 million students. The University of South Africa (UNISA), the country’s main ODL provider, enrolls one-third of South Africa’s students; it is the largest university in all of Africa with 400,000 students. Its most famous graduate is Nelson Mandela, who earned a UNISA correspondence degree while imprisoned.
In another example, the National Open University of Nigeria (NOUN) is Nigeria’s largest university with 254,000 students and 77 study centers (2017). NOUN recently established the first digital online Open Educational Resources repository in West Africa and began offering MOOCs. In 2016, the university announced that it would distribute i-NOUN tablets pre-loaded with study materials to all its students.
In Turkey, distance education has contributed strongly to boosting tertiary GERs from 30 percent in 2004 to 86 percent in 2014. Anadolu University, Turkey’s national ODL provider, has grown into a veritable mega-university. It enrolled more than 1.7 million undergraduate students in 2014 (about one-third of all of Turkey’s higher education students).
ODL universities provide inclusive, needs-based education. They are generally considered an effective instrument of social development and have been supported by organizations like UNESCO. What most have in common are their relatively low admission standards compared to other HEIs. Most, but not all, charge tuition for their programs, which range from short-term diploma and certificate courses to full-fledged bachelor, master, and doctoral programs.
Many ODL institutions follow a blended learning model that combines various forms of distance delivery with tutoring at study centers, which also provide students with access to libraries, computers, and videoconferencing facilities. Flexible schedules allow first-time students and working adults alike to pursue education, even in remote underserved regions.
ODL is often dismissed as substandard; however, open universities were not conceptualized to function as centers of academic excellence. They were designed to bring education to the masses at low operating costs. IGNOU, for example, educates its more than three million students with a lean staff of only 573 faculty members and about 50,000 academic counselors. ODL is not a solution for creating world-class education systems, but it plays a vital role in providing access to millions of students and has become an integral part of many education systems.
It must be acknowledged, however, that in general, the quality of distance education providers varies greatly. The proliferation of substandard programs under the purview of IGNOU’s DEC, for example, has created quality problems in India akin to those the country experienced after the rapid growth of private brick-and-mortar HEIs. As a result, India’s University Grants Commission (UGC) increasingly clashed with IGNOU, closed several distance providers, and banned distance education at non-university institutions (and Deemed-to-be universities) after shifting quality assurance to the UGC’s Distance Education Bureau.
But it would be a mistake to dismiss all ODL institutions as low quality. Britain’s Open University, for instance, is ranked among the world’s top 500 universities in the current Times Higher Education world university ranking; and UNISA is considered one of the better universities in South Africa (it is currently ranked at position 801 to 1000 in the Times ranking).
As pioneers in distance education, many ODL universities now increasingly deliver learning content via the Internet. However, the status of ODL mega-universities as the main providers of distance education is increasingly in jeopardy because of digital education initiatives pursued by other HEIs. “Many Open Universities are experiencing [a] severe competitive threat from other local universities or from foreign entrants who are taking advantage of new technologies to move quickly, sometimes more quickly than Open Universities can, into the online space ….” says the Open University’s Alan Tait.
While ODL mega universities still dominate distance education, newer forms of remote learning like MOOCs and new online universities are spreading increasingly in regions like SSA. For instance, in 2017, the Association of African Universities (AAU) inked an agreement with the upcoming online education provider eLearnAfrica. The deal is expected to expand the online course offerings of AAU’s 380 member universities by 1,000 MOOCs, making learning opportunities possible for an additional 10 million African students.
AAU’s secretary-general, Etienne Ehouan Ehil, has noted that “challenges of limited access to quality higher education continue to haunt us. Therefore, building capacities of African universities to be innovative in their … learning methods for increased access to quality higher education is a top priority for the AAU. This partnership with eLearnAfrica will help us achieve this goal.”
This development reflects the recent growth of online education in Africa. Initiatives to advance digital learning date back as far as 1997 when the World Bank sponsored the creation of the African Virtual University (AVU), a pan-African institution that has since grown exponentially utilizing a satellite-based delivery system.
According to its latest publicized annual report, AVU had by 2015 trained “63,000 students across Africa and … established the largest network of Open Distance and eLearning institutions with 53 institutions in over 30 countries in sub-Saharan Africa.” AVU is now slated to become part of the Pan African University, a postgraduate institution funded by the African Union (AU). Rebranded as the “Africa Virtual and E-University,” the institution is expected to provide ODL in virtually all African countries and offer programs in English and French.
AVU is just one of several online universities that have sprung up across Africa. Others include the University of Africa, Unicaf University, the Virtual University of Uganda, and the Virtual University of Senegal, an institution that reportedly enrolled 20,000 students in 2017/18. Traditional universities are also rolling out online programs at an accelerated pace. Prominent distance education units at established universities include Wits Plus at the University of the Witwatersrand (South Africa), the Distance Learning Centre of Ahmadu Bello University (Nigeria), or Kenyatta University’s Digital School of Virtual and Open Learning (Kenya).
These trends, as important as they are, are likely just the beginning of a drastic expansion of Africa’s nascent digital learning market. Companies of all shapes and sizes are entering this market in various corners of the continent. Launched in Zambia in 2015, the company Mwabu, which distributes e-learning content to 180,000 elementary students via tablets, intends to eventually reach 100 million learners. In South Africa, Eneza Education delivers learning content, including national school curricula, via mobile cell phones. It currently claims 2.1 million registered learners.
Other examples of new digital providers include the Rwanda-based Kepler University, which offers online degrees in partnership with Southern New Hampshire University in the United States. The small but fast-growing company Getsmarter, meanwhile, offers online certificate programs in collaboration with top international universities like Harvard. Digital learning is also increasing its presence in vocational education: The company Edacy combines MOOCs with short industrial apprenticeships. Distance learning in vocational education is explicitly promoted by the South African government.
Most African governments now also have policies that urge Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) penetration and digital learning. Kenya’s government, for instance, in 2016 launched a Digital Learning Program to digitize elementary education. By March 2018, more than one million laptops and tablets pre-loaded with interactive digital content had been delivered to 19,000 public schools. Rwanda, one of Africa’s ICT pioneers, similarly plans to turn all its classrooms into wired, “smart” classrooms by 2020 in partnership with Microsoft. In higher education, the government is developing a National Open and Distance eLearning Policy and plans to offer online distance education at the University of Rwanda – an initiative that is supported by UNESCO.
The Indian government and 47 AU member countries, meanwhile, have signed on to the Pan-Africa e-network Project, a large-scale initiative that connects Indian and African universities via a tele-education software system, using a satellite hub station in Senegal. The initiative also connects African medical facilities with medical specialty hospitals in India, enabling Indian doctors to review digitized medical records in Africa and provide live teleconsultations.
Overall, the market volume of self-paced e-learning alone doubled in Africa between 2011 and 2016, according to the market research firm Ambient Insight. Another research firm, IMARC, found that the e-learning sector in SSA grew by 15 percent annually between 2010 and 2017, reaching a value of more than USD$690 million in 2017. The e-learning market on the continent is projected to further grow to USD$1.5 billion by 2023. The use of digital learning management systems is also showing signs of vigorous growth. There is no question that there is tremendous potential for digital education in Africa, especially given the increasing Internet penetration on the continent.
Africa still trails far behind other world regions in terms of Internet penetration. Only 18 percent of households on the continent had an Internet connection in their homes in 2017, compared with 84.2 percent in Europe.
It should be noted, though, that Internet penetration in Africa varies considerably by country and region. While a majority of urban Africans now have mobile devices and access to mobile broadband Internet, many people in remote rural areas lack personal access have to use the internet at “public facilities like schools, universities, and internet kiosks, which are connected via satellite terminals, often powered by solar power.” Likewise, Internet usage rates in countries like Kenya or Mali are as high as 85 percent and 65 percent, but they hover below 6 percent in countries like Burundi, the Central African Republic, or Chad.
However, the continent is catching up fast, fueled by the spread of more affordable smartphones and mobile data plans. “Mobile development has enabled Africans to ‘leapfrog’ poor landline infrastructure, which has been a brake on progress. Many Africans get their first Internet experience on mobile rather than a desktop computer….” In fact, mobile phones are now spreading so fast that Uganda is said to have three times more cell phones than lightbulbs.
Market watchers expect the total number of mobile broadband connections in Africa to more than double from 419 million in 2017 to 1.07 billion by 2022, with 5G advanced mobile technology expected to arrive at the beginning of the next decade. According to a recent report by the British social media marketing agency We Are Social, the number of African Internet users increased by 20 percent between 2017 and 2018 alone, with users “in Mali increasing by almost 6 times since January 2017. The number of Internet users in Benin, Sierra Leone, Niger, and Mozambique has more than doubled over the past year too.” Even by more conservative estimates, at least 40 percent of people in SSA will have some form of Internet access within seven years.
To put these trends in context, Africa’s fixed landline broadband infrastructure is still marginal—more than 90 percent of all Internet connections on the continent are via mobile networks. Desktop and laptop ownership is also rare so that digital learning in Africa will mostly occur on mobile devices for years to come. This usage, however, is in line with global shifts toward mobile technology. The increased processor speed of mobile devices now allows the use of applications that were previously accessible only on desktop computers.
South Asia is the world region with the second-lowest Internet penetration worldwide with a user rate of 36 percent in 2018. However, Internet usage is spreading fast, if varying by country. India in 2016 overtook the U.S. as the country with the second-largest number of Internet users in the world after China. Between 2016 and 2017, the number of mobile Internet users in India grew by fully 17.2 percent to 456 million, reaching a penetration rate of about 34 percent.
The Rise of Online Education in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia
That rate is going to rise quickly: The number of mobile Internet users is estimated to swell by an additional 330 million by 2025. As in Africa, this growth is largely attributable to affordable mobile devices and reduced prices for data plans—79 percent of all Web traffic in India currently takes place on mobile phones. India also has a similar urban-rural divide: While mobile Internet penetration in the cities stood at 59 percent in 2017, rural India trailed far behind with only 18 percent.
India’s government is currently rolling out a new digital communications policy that aims at bringing fixed-line broadband connections to 50 percent of Indian households, as well as to communications towers in rural regions, by 2022. While some observers doubt that this objective can be achieved, India is poised to take a massive “digital leap” in the years ahead. By some estimates, 1.2 billion Indians will have a smartphone by 2030. The volume of India’s online retail business alone is projected to surge by 1,200 percent by 2026.
Bangladesh, meanwhile, already has a higher Internet usage rate than India’s. According to the Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission, 85.9 million people—slightly more than 50 percent of the population—had an Internet subscription in April 2018. That number represents an astronomical growth rate over the rate in 2010, when merely 3.7 percent of Bangladeshis were using the Internet, according to the World Bank. The country adopted a proactive digitization strategy that essentially brought half of the population online within just a decade. Mobile network coverage now extends to 95 percent of Bangladesh’s geographical area, including remote islands. As a result, Bangladesh has become the second-largest supplier of online freelance laborers worldwide after India.
In Nepal, the growth in Internet usage has been equally impressive. The percentage of Internet users in the Himalayan country skyrocketed from 1.97 percent in 2009 to 55 percent in 2018. Digital access in Pakistan, on the other hand, is still nascent. Only 22 percent of Pakistanis use the Internet, despite notable growth rates in past years. The country’s online use remains characterized by distinct digital divides—not only between urban and rural regions but also between the sexes.
Rising Internet use in many parts of South Asia has opened the doors wide for digital education. By most accounts, India is already the second-largest online education market after the United States. The consulting firm KPMG and technology company Google project that the value of India’s digital learning market will grow eightfold within just five years, from USD$247 million in 2016 to USD$1.96 billion by 2021.
Online education in the country exists in various forms, including vocational reskilling certificates, test prep programs, and language courses. Supplementary online courses in elementary and secondary education are projected to grow the most until 2021, but online higher education is also expected to grow by 41 percent, with online MBAs being the most popular. Speaking to the news website Quartz, Nitin Bawankule, industry director of Google India, noted last year that increasing Internet penetration has coincided with a growing interest in online education in Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities.
The Rise of Online Education in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia
India’s government supports this trend. After curbing online and distance education programs in 2017 because of problems with quality and the spread of non-recognized programs, the UGC recently reinstated online degree programs for the 2018/19 academic year. It notes that these programs “are a big step towards attaining the targeted GER of 30% by the year 2020.” India’s human resource development minister, Prakash Javadekar, recently affirmed that India will be “creating an enabling environment where not just students but working executives can study and earn a degree without traveling the distance.”
To ensure quality, only HEIs that have been in existence for at least five years and are rated A+ by the National Assessment and Accreditation Council will be allowed to offer online programs. Public open universities are not affected by these restrictions: About 15 percent of India’s universities will soon be able to provide existing degree programs wholly online, as long as the programs aren’t in disciplines that require lab courses or another hands-on study. Authorized universities can offer programs online that lead to certificates, diplomas, or degrees, using video lectures, online materials, and discussion forums.
This policy change is just one example of several digital learning initiatives pursued by the Indian government. In 2016, for instance, the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) launched SWAYAM (Study Web of Active Learning for Young and Aspiring Minds), an interactive online learning platform of free MOOCs that incorporate video lectures, reading materials, online discussion forums, downloadable assignments, and tests. Some courses offer credit that can be transferred into university programs. The UGC aggressively pushes these MOOCs. It recently issued a directive that “no university shall refuse any student for credit mobility for the courses earned through MOOCs.”
One year after SWAYAM’s launch, the MHRD minister announced that 60,000 students had completed study courses and boasted that SWAYAM had made “knowledge available anytime anywhere” like an “ATM offers the cash.” Indian authorities have hyped SWAYAM, which is slated to offer 2,000 courses, as “the world’s biggest repository of interactive electronic learning resources under a single window.”
Other ongoing digital initiatives include the National Programme on Technology Enhanced Learning (NPTEL), a program that delivers Web-based courses in engineering and science, and the National Academic Depository. The latter is a digital depository of degree certificates and academic transcripts that allows employers and academic institutions to verify credentials online. Formally launched in 2017, the depository was developed to help stem the circulation of fake degrees. It currently contains 11 million credentials from 218 participating HEIs.
MOOCs offered by private providers, meanwhile, are also spreading like wildfire, most notably in the tech hub of Bangalore. The U.S. provider edX registered a 73 percent growth rate in India in 2016. Coursera, meanwhile, reported in July 2017 that the number of Indian users had grown by 50,000 each month throughout the first half of the year. Many Indian MOOC students are working professionals interested in flexible, career-relevant courses. It will be interesting to see how well public SWAYAM can compete with Western providers.
The Rise of Online Education in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia
In sum, online education in India is growing at breakneck speed. The government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, determined to rapidly digitize Indian society, launched a comprehensive Digital India initiative in 2015. Beyond that, online education is considered vital for increasing capacity and upskilling the population.
Digital education is on the rise in other South Asian countries as well. In 2016, Bangladesh digitized its entire elementary school curriculum, enabling 20 million elementary school students to access all their learning materials on cell phones. The Bangladesh Open University, a public mega-university of more than 500,000 students, began rolling out fully online programs the year before, in 2015. It plans to eventually stop using print materials altogether. Educational institutions are speedily being equipped with multimedia classrooms and laptops. The country pursues an aggressive digitization strategy that runs the gamut from pushing online banking to the construction of IT villages and a new public virtual university in an innovative high-tech park. Bangladesh recently expanded its international fiber optic submarine cable infrastructure and launched its first communications satellite in 2018.
Academic institutions in Nepal, likewise, are increasingly rolling out distance learning programs via online delivery. India’s IGNOU has established two regional centers in Kathmandu and partnered with several Nepali providers. Indicative of the growing demand for distance learning, Nepal in 2016 launched the Nepal Open University, the country’s first public open university. The institution delivers master’s programs using tools like online videoconferencing and digital libraries. Meanwhile, organizations like Open Learning Exchange Nepal provide under-resourced rural schools with interactive educational software. As of 2015, the organization had delivered nearly 6,000 laptops to such schools, created a digital library of thousands of books, and developed more than 600 digital learning modules.
Digital education is also spreading in Pakistan. As early as 2002, Pakistan’s government founded the Virtual University of Pakistan to accommodate mushrooming demand. The institution is now one of Pakistan’s largest universities enrolling more than 100,000 students. More recently, the Higher Education Commission launched a Smart Education initiative that seeks to digitize HEIs by introducing blanket WIFI coverage on campuses and distributing 500,000 laptops, to be followed by the creation of e-classrooms to facilitate digital learning. Smaller initiatives and providers are popping up throughout the country as well. For instance, the All Pakistan Private Schools Management Association in the province of Sindh recently introduced an online education portal for elementary and secondary schools.
Compared with MOOC enrollment in India, Pakistan’s is low and held back by limited Internet penetration. The outlook for online courses is nevertheless positive–90,000 students took a MOOC on the edX platform alone in 2016. The Aga Khan University was the first in Pakistan to offer a locally designed MOOC in 2014. More recently, the private Information Technology University in Lahore entered an agreement with edX, in which it will integrate edX’s MicroMasters programs into the university’s curricula and degree programs.
Overall, the digitization of Pakistani society is slowly progressing in various spaces. For instance, Pakistani authorities now use a digital management and monitoring system to track schoolteachers and curb the problem of teacher absenteeism and ghost teachers. As stated earlier, the number of self-employed Pakistanis freelancing online, meanwhile, has risen in recent years—a trend that turned Pakistan into one of the world’s largest hubs for remote freelance labor.
There are countless examples of how digital learning can improve people’s lives. Online education has been effectively used to extend learning opportunities to displaced refugee populations and, as previously noted, marginalized populations in remote rural regions.
E-learning certainly has a number of distinct advantages over brick-and-mortar education. It eliminates the costs of printed teaching materials and the need for physical infrastructure, and can therefore be delivered in regions where such infrastructure does not exist.
It can reduce costs not only for academic institutions but also for students who often have to travel long distances to schools and universities in regions like SSA. Online education class schedules are usually flexible, and course materials are typically accessible anytime, making study easier for working adults. Digital libraries provide access to literature where no physical libraries exist.
Crucially, e-learning is not limited by the size of physical classrooms—online courses can be taken by an unlimited number of students around the globe, whether they’re in Accra, Bogota, Delhi, Dhaka, or Lagos. As the access to electricity and broadband Internet increases, online education will quickly become accessible to ever-larger audiences. And distributing inexpensive tablets to students is still cheaper than building brick-and-mortar institutions. It is therefore not surprising that academic institutions and governments in SSA and South Asia are increasingly pushing online learning, comparatively cost-effective investment in human capital development.
At the same time, some think that the current dominance of Western providers in e-learning markets smacks of the re-colonialization of the academic space in developing regions. As international education scholar, Philip G. Altbach has argued, the spread of Western MOOCs is the “neocolonialism of the willing”: The adoption of Western, English-language online courses in developing countries tends to perpetuate the hegemony of Western countries in global education.
Indeed, a world where youngsters from Kampala to Karachi recycle the same canned learning content developed in California or Massachusetts may lead to an undesirable intellectual homogenization. It is vital for countries to develop their own local learning content in local languages. India’s SWAYAM is a step in the right direction. As more local providers enter the e-learning market and online learning becomes more common in the developing world, it stands to reason that MOOC content will evolve beyond Western-produced courses.
Another problem is the lack of recognition of MOOCs and other forms of online learning. While a degree from a distance education university like IGNOU may not be comparable to a degree from a top research university, it is still a qualification that opens access to employment and further academic study.
A completion certificate for a Coursera MOOC, on the other hand, is currently not a viable form of academic currency. Many online providers still operate outside of established quality assurance and accreditation frameworks. Beyond that, all forms of distance education, be they formally accredited or not, still have to overcome the barrier of a low reputation. Online education is also unsuitable for disciplines that require practical, hands-on training (unless offered as part of a blended model approach).
The most common and closely related criticism of online learning, of course, is that it is an inferior, isolated, anonymous learning experience. In this view, online learning provides a sterile environment that cannot compete with the real-world, tangible, and touchable learning environments in which it is much easier for students and teachers to interact and exchange ideas. This notion is still widespread: A 2011 survey of 4,564 U.S. university instructors found that nearly two-thirds of them considered e-learning outcomes to be inferior to those involving traditional face-to-face courses.
Several examples illustrate the shortcomings of online education. For example, dropout rates in online programs tend to be higher compared with those of traditional programs. A recent study by the University of California, Davis concluded that grade averages and completion rates of students in online programs at community colleges were significantly lower than in traditional programs. In India, likewise, dropout rates in distance education programs have been found to be higher than in traditional programs. Completion rates in MOOCs are even worse. Research from 2013 found that less than 7 percent of enrollees in a sample of 29 MOOCs completed their courses.
Many analysts have argued that online education is much less suitable to first-time students than students who have prior education since the latter has already acquired real-world academic skills—a circumstance that would limit the potential of e-learning as a means of expanding capacity. Enrollees in MOOCs, in fact, are often postgraduate students: In 2013, researchers from the University of Pennsylvania that surveyed Coursera MOOC participants noted that more than 80 percent had either a two- or four-year post-secondary degree. Among participants in Brazil, China, India, Russia, and South Africa, the vast majority of participants came “from the wealthiest and most well-educated 6% of the population,” according to the researchers.
Many analyst have argued about The Rise of Online Education in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia”
In developing countries, the mere provision of access to technology and digital content alone is certainly not enough to motivate students to embrace digital learning. The distribution of laptops pre-loaded with learning content to 800,000 public schoolchildren in Peru has been largely unsuccessful. While the pupils used the laptops for games and social media, they did not connect with them for learning purposes.
The Peruvian example illustrates the need to supplement digital learning programs with training for inexperienced teachers in how to use computers in elementary education. But the need to bridge such gaps in know-how is evident even at the university level. IGNOU, for example, supplements online programs with face-to-face tutoring at learning centers. This approach is well-founded: A number of studies show that it is blended learning models that are most effective, not programs offered exclusively online. Hybrid approaches are perhaps the most promising, highest quality model going forward. Former President of Stanford University John Hennessy considers the flipped classroom model, which combines online lectures with classroom instruction, “as effective as traditional lectures.”
The Rise of Online Education in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia
What these problems suggest is that digital learning is still experiencing growing pains. But even e-learning detractors have to acknowledge that the spread of digital education cannot be stopped—it will slowly but surely transform the shape of education in many parts of the world. As this article illustrates, governments and academic institutions in SSA and South Asia are swiftly adopting digital learning models, despite persistent technological barriers. In light of current developments and trends, it’s probably safe to assume that digital education in these regions will grow exponentially.
Current e-learning models are imperfect. In the future, educators and policymakers developing these models will need to work out how to best conceptualize and utilize online learning and improve the delivery and content of online courses, while making them more interactive and relevant to local contexts. At any rate, younger generations that grow up hooked on mobile devices and have a large share of social interactions online will be more receptive to digital education. U.S. employers, for instance, are already more accepting of online degrees than in the past decade.
Irrespective of quality concerns, ballooning demand will drive the spread of digital education, akin to the fast-growing privatization of education. The number of tertiary students worldwide is estimated to grow from 214.1 million in 2015 to 594.1 million by 2040, with developing regions like SSA and South Asia experiencing high growth rates. As discussed earlier, governments there face nearly insurmountable challenges in building costly brick-and-mortar institutions amid rapidly surging demand.
To be sure, “tablet teachers”, interactive lectures, and online chat forums alone are not a substitute for face-to-face interactions with professors and peers, a vital aspect of learning. It is difficult to see how education delivered exclusively online could ever produce world-class scholars. As argued here, however, e-learning will play an increasingly important complementary role in mass education, driven by the need to reduce costs and accommodate demand.
The way current trends are shaping up, the rationalization and streamlining of education in developing regions will take digital education to new heights. Underprivileged social segments will increasingly be educated via “m-learning,” using mobile phones; while elite universities will progressively incorporate digital content into blended learning models. Online education will also be increasingly used in vocational education and to upskill adult learners. Furthermore, top research universities in Africa, for example, will be able to share costs and pool resources using tools like shared digital libraries and digital communication facilities that will help connect institutions across the continent in transnational research clusters.
The Rise of Online Education in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia
The Rise of Online Education in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia
Hill-City University Admission Application Form
Hill City University Cotonou Benin Republic, top accredited Benin republic university, nysc guaranteed and nuc approved
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The admission application form is available for all fresh and transfer students, for admission requirements, click here apply now
The mission is to provide high quality, morally sound, and socially relevant education, in the, most costly-effective positive manner, to all its students, irrespective of gender, race, color, ethnicity, or religion. The University will develop, promote, and be run as a unique Christian institution with the following distinctive features: Discipline
– O level Result [WAEC /NECO]
– Birth Certificate
– Four (4) Passport Photograph
– International Passport
– Admission Application Fee
Benin Republic information portal (Beninfo247), is to provide relevant information to the world, below are the links to access Benin Republic relevant information’s.
The application process into Benin Republic Universities is as simple as you can imagine, there is nothing like writing entry examination or being a pre-degree student before having full access to becoming an undergraduate of the school.
Application into Benin republic universities is so easy and stress-free. to know more about the Application process into Benin Republic Universities, To read the full Article from the Benin Republic information portal, Click on the below link.
https://www.beninfo247.com/application-process-into-benin-republic-universities/
A parent can help their children improve their learning skills, develop strong reading skills and writing skills.
Children who read with their parents are better prepared for school and begins school with knowledge of book language and familiarity with concepts of the text. To read the full Articles, click on the link below to extract more information on Benin Republic information portal (Beninfo247).
https://www.beninfo247.com/how-to-teach-a-child-to-read-and-write-in-benin-republic/
Normally, you can select your choice of a university by location. But with online classes, location doesn’t matter. If you are living in Abuja and want to take classes at Leadpreneur Academy at Cotonou University, you can. For more information on the benefits of studying online, click on the link below to the Benin Republic information portal.
https://www.beninfo247.com/benefits-of-studying-online-in-benin-republic/
The fast and quality degree program, the fact that we do not dwell on irrelevant theoretical teachings but focus on relevant topics, saves a lot of time and resources. This is Benin Republic information portal, check for more updates with the link below.
https://www.beninfo247.com/outstanding-advantages-of-studying-in-benin-republic/
The University Institute of Benin (IUB) is an association created by fifteen members who are, for the most part, of the world of Education. The IUB association is registered under No. 2001-455 MISD / DC / SG / DAI / SAAP-Assoc of 26 September 2001.
https://www.beninfo247.com/the-university-institute-of-benin-iub/
WAUU UNIVERSITY ADMISSION APPLICATION FORM
wauu university benin republic
West africa Union university (Wauu) Cotonou Benin Replubic, top accredited benin republic university, nysc guaranteed and nuc approved
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West africa Union university (Wauu) Cotonou benin republic admission application form is available for all fresh and transfer students, for admission requirements, click here apply now
- Five O’ Level credit of any International / National Examination to include English English Language and Mathematics for all Degree Courses.
- 18 Months Foundation Diploma for Direct entry into 200 Level.
- 9 Months Pre – degree Science into 100 Level.
- ND / Diploma from recognized Institutions into 200Level.
- OOUC Special Diploma into remedial class of 300 Level.
- NCE from any recognized colleges of Education into 300 Level.
Most universities in Benin Republic offer admission 3 times a year; September, January, and June. The Universities run academic sessions in semesters; in other words, 3 semesters make a session. Each semester is about 3 months or 15 weeks.
The first semester is September and marks the beginning of a new session. This is the period when the school officially begins a fresh session, new students are admitted and old ones move to the next level. Application and Admission begin earlier, around July/August. Admission still continues even till September/October. The semester runs till December when students take a 2-3 weeks break and resume January.
The Second semester is January. New students are also admitted in this semester. The semester runs for about 3 months. Around May the students go for a longer break which could last for 1-4 months.
Students who began from the first semester will go for a longer break while students who joined during the second semester will go for a shorter break and resume
The Summer semester is the third and final semester in an academic year and varies slightly from school to school. The semester begins around June through till early September. Studying in the summer semester is optional for most students. However, students who enroll for the summer semester are those who missed either the first or second semester and want to make up for it.
New students are also enrolled in this semester. Classes contain the same amount of material and are more focused and intense and students have to cover up for previous semesters. In this semester, students have to work smart and intensively.
Most students like to go on vacation during the summer break while some prefer to stay back in school and study professional courses and more. Taking summer classes helps some students “stay in the mode” of studying. It helps them maintain a routine of learning and studying throughout the summer. It may also help them retain information from the previous semester that they will need in the following semester.
To begin studying in Benin Republic, there are entry requirements you will have to meet. These requirements are basic ones and have been grouped according to level programs. That is for B.SC, Transfer, Masters, Top-Up, and Ph.D.
As a prospective student of Benin Republic, knowing an estimate of the amount involved in studying here is necessary. English Universities in Benin Republic are private. The Tuition Fee is more affordable when you compare them to private universities in Nigeria. The first fee to be paid is … find out more
ISCG UNIVERSITY APPLICATION FORM
*ISCG University is recognized as a student-centered institution with a global perspective. We engage more than 400 graduate and undergraduate students in distinctive educational experiences that connect to the unique and diverse opportunities within and beyond our region.
The University is an independent communication, management, and technology-focused university. It was established in 2013 by Mr. ADJAMONSI Patrick, a reputable journalist in the Republic of Benin and also the founder of L’aurore newspaper. *ISCG University is accredited by the higher ministry of education, Benin republic, CAMES and recognized by the federal ministry of education Abuja, Nigeria… Read more
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