Collaboration between the Rwandan government, the University of Rwanda, and local industry to develop and deploy educator technology-integration professional development initiatives neatly follows the Triple Helix Model[1]. However, in this Rwandan initiative a fourth collaborative partner proved significant, the regional/global education community coordinated by UNESCO’s Regional Office for Eastern Africa.
NBA has been integrally involved in Saide’s OER Africa initiative as a core project partner. Since 2008, OER Africa’s mission has been to establish dynamic networks of African OER practitioners by sensitizing and connecting like-minded educators – teachers, academics, trainers, and policy makers – to develop, share, and adapt OER to meet the education needs of African societies. By creating and sustaining networks of collaboration – face-to-face and online – OER Africa supports African educators and learners to harness the power of OER.
NBA supported the Anzisha Prize programme of the African Leadership Academy (ALA) to run their monitoring and evaluation processes and to conduct ad hoc research on specific issues as identified by Anzisha (2018-2021). The Anzisha Prize is a partnership between ALA and Mastercard Foundation. It runs a series of programmes and events and provide on-going support to build entrepreneurial activity of young people in Africa aged 15 to 22 years.
NBA aims to contribute to improving education in developing-world contexts by advancing open, sustainable, and cost-effective solutions to educational challenges. With this grant, NBA will lead research to deepen knowledge on the most effective strategies to create government policy and regulatory environments that support effective implementation of the recently approved UNESCO OER Recommendation, working in partnership with UNESCO’s Dynamic Coalition, UNESCO’s regional offices in Africa, and other key African partners.
Openly licensed resources are ‘free’ to access, but there are significant creation, adaptation, production, and use costs. The long-term sustainability of local-language publishing requires that these costs be met fairly, using financial models that will enable people to establish, grow, and maintain effective content creation organizations. This research aims to raise awareness of the various costs that go into producing and translating storybooks and of the relationship between investment and quality.
