In Global Peace Through The Global University System

2003 Ed. by T. Varis, T. Utsumi, and W. R. Klemm

University of Tampere, Hameenlinna, Finland

HOW NEW INFORMATION TECHNOLOGIES

CAN BE USED TO ADVANCE LEARNING IN

AGRO-PASTORAL COMMUNITIES IN AFRICA

Dani W. Nabudere

Afrika Study Centre

Introduction

We live in an age of rapid social and technological change. At the same time, there is a time "lag" in the way time tends to separate communities in terms of space and social conditions. In this way, it appears as if some communities live in the 21^st century technologically, while others are still living in the 10^th century. This circumstance has been brought about by the rapid changes in economic and political conditions in certain countries, which at some point of time were able to secure certain technological advantages that gave them the capacity to acquire speed in travel over large expanses of water to conquer and subjugate others.

While this imperialistic aggression created conditions for the introduction of new economies and social conditions for both the dominant and the native peoples of Asia, the Americas, and Africa, it did not result in the equalization of development opportunities for both groups of peoples. The dominant classes in the dominant imperialist countries used every opportunity at their disposal to advance their interests at the expense of the subjugated peoples, whose resources were used for the interests of the dominant economies. Technological inventions and innovations were used for the economic advancement of these dominant interests as well as their armies. This created a technological gap, which has widened into a digital divide between the two groups of peoples in the present age. Yet material and social conditions now exist for the termination of this divide.

The conditions that have been created by these past conditions are that the pastoral communities and their domestic animals have been cordoned off against their agricultural neighbors. A previously symbiotic relationship has been turned into one of hostilities. The pastoralists were forced to settle down and engage in agricultural pursuits by force, but they resisted this imposition. The agriculturalists were favored to some extent in that they produced food products that were required for the home economy. This led to the over-concentration of populations and domestic animals on smaller areas of land. No longer able to move around to exploit the varieties in ecological and weather conditions, the nomads and pastoralists found themselves in conditions that led to the over-stocking of cattle on small areas and consequently to over-grazing and ecological degradation of their lands. Unable to engage in agricultural production because they lacked the skills and culture to quickly transform into this form of production, and resisting what they regarded as impositions by the colonial authorities, they continued to use the cow and goats as their main means of livelihood.

In time both the agriculturalists and pastoralists have found themselves face to face in poverty, because neither the cash crop export economy nor the animal husbandry methods adopted were sustainable. The result was a confrontation over declining ecological and economic resources due to environmental degradation and the hostile global economic and political conditions. The pastoralists have pressed for more land where they can graze and feed themselves and their animals. The agriculturalists on the other hand finding themselves with limited amounts of land (due to over-population) resist any form of pastoralist encroachment on their limited land resources. This confrontation has turned into bitter and violent conflicts between the two kinds of communities as well as among themselves. This is what today is called "ethnic conflict". Globalization has intensified these conflicts by fuelling them with small arms proliferation.

The most pressing problem today is how to build and make peace between the two communities, while at the same time exploring new ways through which they can engage in new sustainable forms of livelihood. What is most required therefore is to find out how information and communication technologies can be used positively to enable these poor and marginalized communities to learn and transform their lives in a peaceful way. This requires the adaptation of these new technologies to the conditions of the pastoralists and their agricultural neighbors. This paper seeks to explore ways in which education and lifelong learning through the use of information and communication technologies can be used to improve the lot of these communities. With education, these communities will engage in activities that can result in the social transformation of their lives. However for that to take place, such transformation has to take account of their cultures and historical experiences. Lifelong learning, through distance education, offers the best means by which this transformation can be achieved.

Globalization and the New Technologies

The age in which we live today is characterized by the predominance of new information and communication technologies (ICT), which are being exploited to the full by corporate capitalist economic expansion. Instead of leading to the improvement in the lives of the people of the world, the deployment of these technologies has resulted in the marginalisation and social exclusion of vast numbers of the world's poor communities. As Castells has argued, today we live in an age of informationalism, which at the turn of the millennium is "intertwined with rising inequality and social exclusion throughout the world" (Castells, 2000: 68). On the one hand, economic globalization by corporate capital has made possible the generation of huge profits for the corporations on an unprecedented scale, particularly in the "new economies" which are using these new technologies. On the other hand, this new situation has led to the enlargement of the gap between the rich and the poor throughout the world. Instead of creating a Global Village of communities enjoying advantages from these new productive powers, the system of production and distribution has led to a polarized world between the "haves" and the "have nots."

New technologies on their own have not led to this divide, but it has been their control and use by a few rich countries to the disadvantage of the vast majority of poor people in the world. Those with financial and military powers have controlled the use and application of technology - especially, for military purposes to the disadvantage of social uses. What is worse, these dominant social forces have given themselves the right, under neo-liberal ideology, to patent natural properties such as biological substances, including life-forming ones, to become private property of those corporations that wish to profit from them. They have also tried to own indigenous knowledge systems of the native peoples of the Americas, Asia and Africa as well as Oceania. These activities of transnational corporations do not constitute an economic necessity, but are the result of deliberate economic strategies pursued by particular social groups. They are the expression of the economic interests of these dominant social forces, who use the state to enforce their interests and dictates.

Neo-liberal ideology has, in short, tried to use its political influence, to impose a particular legal regime under the Uruguayan Round of the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs (GATT) and the World Trade Organization (WTO) to turn certain collective rights over natural resources into private interests, which can be exploited for individual and private profit. They have tried to privatize the collective rights which humanity has acquired over centuries to advance their private interest and enjoyment. Humanity is therefore entitled to agitate against these private "rights" and insist that technology should be exploited for the common good of all humanity and not for private gain for the few. This is the basis upon which sustainable development can take place. But there are now possibilities for change, and humanity must seize this opportunity to advance the general good.

The Internet is the newest of these human achievements. It is also true that this technology was first used for military purposes for the benefit of these dominant social forces. But now it has been taken over by humanity and, to a certain extent democratized. New Economy industries, which include biotechnology, semiconductors, computers, software, telecommunications, and other related industries, while exploited by these dominant social forces, are increasingly being redefined in their processes of control and use. What seems to define the New Economy industry is its reliance on the generation of knowledge or information, rather than the actual control of the physical technology within the industry. For example, IBM and AT&T are both considered New Economy companies despite their long histories, and their future profitability is guaranteed by the knowledge they are able to generate from these information and communication technologies rather than their physical control. In short, intellectual property is being redefined.

But the Internet also opens up the possibilities of widening the scope of acquiring knowledge on a large scale for a wider humanity. This means that this form of technology can now be used for the benefit of the marginalized and excluded communities to increase their knowledge of the world and of themselves, making it possible for them to engage in self-transformative and self-empowering social and economic activities. This is possible in the process of a continuing struggle on the part of the oppressed indigenous communities for their political and economic rights. It involves a continuing demand for the return or proper management of their natural resources, which were taken away from them. Many small ethnic and cultural communities are currently engaged in a struggle for democracy in the control over their natural resources. In the process of these struggles, the use of ICT for self-transformative action can be fruitful.

In a report entitled: "Promoting Information & Communication Technology for Development - Harnessing Information Technology for Development: Implementing African Information Society Initiative," the Organization of African Unity (OAU) argued that the "problem" with globalization was that information and communications had become an ingredient of development but that Africa lagged behind in this area. It noted that sustainable changes in the quality of life could not be achieved without human institutional development. Equally, digital utilities could not catalyze human development. What does this mean, the OAU asked? In its view, the development of information and communication technologies were useful in:

• providing topical information
• promoting non-formal education
• providing a two-way communication
• creating conditions for interactive learning
• providing motivation
• making it easier for group decision
• enabling planning and design
• creating conditions for data supply
• providing the basis for monitoring
• making it possible for ensuring financial control.

Telematics, for instance, was identified as capable of enhancing the human training and education sphere in Africa. At the 1995 African Regional Symposium on Telematics for Development meeting in Ethiopia, it was noted by the participants that:

"The accelerating advancement of Telematics - the marriage of telecommunications with informatics and audiovisual technologies - is spawning a multiplicity of new applications such as multimedia products and services, 'intelligent' interfaces, high definition television, and ubiquitous computer networks seen as evolving rapidly towards 'information superhighways'. This transformation, although up until now evident mainly in the industrialized countries, will steadily improve access to rich and nearly instantaneous supplies of information worldwide, independent of distance, and lead to major changes in all societies - in the economy, in government, in life-styles, in cultural patterns, and in education systems."

It continued:

"In particular, Telematics will enable the creation of co-operative networks in Africa and, in a longer perspective, offer new opportunities for distance education, healthcare and other development-related activity."

This demonstrates that globalization has produced processes and outcomes, which makes the learning of skills and competencies to be of paramount importance in people's lives. It follows that today; it is not enough to have the same living and skills that were brought about by old style development strategies or traditional ways of life. Today, learning to learn, learning for problem solving, and learning towards critical understanding as well as anticipatory learning are prerequisites for facing the new challenges brought about by globalization.

It follows that education must not only be integral to what we do, but it must go beyond and anticipate changes that are likely to occur because of the rapidity of change itself. In short, learning and education must become even more integrated as a single process in what today we call "Life-Long Learning."

What is Life-Long Learning?

For pastoral communities to exploit fully the benefits of modern techniques in the context of their acquired cultural heritages, they must be able to engage in education and learning activities at all stages. While it is a well-known fact that learning takes places in three phases: informal (during childhood), formal (during schooling), and non-formal (through practical life), these three stages are not in any way separable. They constitute an inter-connected link in the development of the individual in the modern society. In the "traditional" society, a somewhat similar learning process took place. The only differences are the different institutions and economic-social condition of the two historical periods.

In the modern system, socialization of the individual takes place through the nuclear family and the formal schooling system. The workplace plays a role in the education of the individual in the kind of technical and practical engagement individuals have to undergo in the process of production. In between work experiences, the worker requires different kinds of training and retraining of new skills and expertise in order to fit him/herself in the new economic conditions brought about by changes in economic and technological conditions.

In the traditional setting, the individual is socialized though the family, but this family is larger than the modern one. It is an extended family of affines and kinsmen and women-related by blood. The individual has a place, and in this larger family the socializing is partly individualistic and collective. Education takes place through social, cultural, and economic activities through which different age groups, gender and the collective play distinctive roles as part of their status. Such socializing is therefore more integrated than that of the modern system of socialization.

Both these systems - seen from the perspective of history and cultural experience - have their advantages and disadvantages, but they have been the basis for the survival of communities. Today, in a large part of the world, there exist indigenous communities, which have survived the ravages of modernity. In the same way, modernity has also survived "tradition" and both can begin to work side by side in more supportive way than in the past. This is more possible now in the areas of cross-cultural learning, in which new information and communication technologies makes it possible to learn across cultures.

Many countries have endorsed adult education as a strategy of extending educational facilities to adult communities throughout the world. In most "developing" countries, the strategy was used mainly to address the issue of literacy and numeracy. The idea was that for people to engage in `modernization,' it was necessary that they should be able to read and understand the process of using numbers was a dominant paradigm. As a result, the most successful of these countries such as Tanzania, Nicaragua during the Sandinista period as well as Socialist Cuba, engaged in large scale adult education campaigns to enable rural communities to be able to read, write and understand the use of numbers - numeracy.

This approach was later criticized for its formalistic assumption that once people knew how to read and write, they would be better placed to engage in development activities, without considering the factors that tended to inhibit people and communities from benefiting from development and related modernization activities, including education. It was realized that for literacy and numeracy to have real meaning in the lives of illiterates, adult education had to be integrated into the activities of their daily lives. For this reason, new strategies called "functional/integrated adult literacy" were adopted under which literacy classes were integrated to the functions of peasant life in such activities as healthcare, agriculture, and animal husbandry. Even then literacy was related to these functions in a rather mechanical and in-organic way.

In this respect, the approach by the Brazilian educationalist, Paul Freire, proved more innovative and productive in that it accepted the principle of the need for the poor to become literate through integrated learning and practical activities. However, Freire advocated that learning to read and write as well as numeracy had to be based on processes of dialogues in which the demand for literacy became an organic aspect of the felt-need by the poor to engage in other productive activities as part of the learning process.

The concept of "Lifelong Learning" has recently acquired significance over the last twenty years. The economic pressures brought about by globalization have spurred a new awareness about the process of learning. The change in market conditions brought about by technological change has meant that the old skills and competences no longer fit the economic environment of new global competition. This is why the debate spurred by the OECD countries in their report: "Recurrent Education: A Strategy for Lifelong Learning," published in 1973, saw lifelong learning in purely economic terms. Lifelong learning was seen as essential for the training of the labor force so it could have new skills for the new global corporate competition. Retraining was also seen as a strategy for creating new employment opportunities for the retrenched workers.

But this focus, left out other, if not more important aspects of learning. As the Delors' Report of the European Union pointed out in 1996, learning throughout life was essential not only for adapting to the evolving requirements of the labor market and for the mastery of changing time-frames, but it was necessary also for the understanding of the rhythms of individual existence. In a famous section, the Delors' Report entitled: "Learning: The Treasure Within" pointed out that for this reason, the concept of "learning throughout life" had emerged as one of the keys to the twenty-first century:

"It goes beyond the traditional distinction between initial and continuing education. It meets the challenges of a rapidly changing world. This is not a new insight, since previous reports on education have emphasized the need for people to return to education in order to deal with new situations arising in their personal and working lives. That need is still felt and is even becoming stronger. The only way of satisfying it is for each individual to learn how to learn."

The report added that in order to learn the process of learning afresh, there was also the need to build on four pillars of new education. These were: learn to live together, learning to know, learning to do, and learning to be. These pillars were the foundation of education.

Learning to live together implied "developing understanding of the others and their history, traditions, and spiritual values." It meant that on this basis of this human commonality, education would create "a new spirit which, guided by the recognition of our growing interdependence and common analysis of the challenges of the future - induce people to implement common projects or to manage the inevitable conflicts in an intelligent and peaceful way." In addition to learning to live together, there was also the need to learn to know as well as learning to do as two other pillars of the new educational foundation. Learning to know implied that learners had to combine a "sufficiently broad general education with the possibility of an in-depth work on a selected number of subjects", which "provides, so to speak, the passport to lifelong education, in so far as it gives people a taste - but also a foundation - for leaning throughout life." Learning to know also meant that in addition to learning to do a piece of work, lifelong learning would entail the acquisition of competence that enabled people to deal with a variety of situations, often unforeseeable, and to work in teams, a feature to which educational methods do not at present pay enough attention to". The Report added:

"In many cases, such competence and skills are more readily acquired if pupils and students have the opportunity to try out and develop their abilities by becoming involved in work experience schemes or social work while they are still in education, whence the increased importance that should be attached to all methods of alternating work and study."

Finally, there was the pillar of learning to be. Edgar Faure drew this pillar from a report on education entitled: "Learning to Be: The World Education Today and Tomorrow," which was published by UNESCO in 1972. Already in 1972, Faure had predicted that education in the twenty-first century would have to address the demand for greater independence and judgment for individuals combined with a stronger sense of personal responsibility for the attainment of common goals. The Delors' Report emphasized the point further and called for the tapping of the talents and treasurers still hidden in every person. It pointed out:

"There are, to name but a few: memory, reasoning power, imagination, physical ability, aesthetic sense, the aptitude to communicate with others and the natural charisma of the group leader, which again goes to prove the need for greater self-knowledge."

The Delors Commission alluded to the emergence of the "learning society" founded on the acquisition, renewal, and use of knowledge, to be nurtured as a necessary "utopia." As the development of the "information society" was increasing the opportunities for access to data and facts, education should enable everyone to gather information and to select, arrange, manage, and use it. That is why the Faure report had also already in 1972 sought to institutionalize the concept of lifelong education by advocating for the right and necessity of individuals to learn for their social, economic, political and cultural development. The report had noted that the idea of lifelong education practices already existed in diverse cultures all over the world and he argued that on the basis of this common experience, there was need for lifelong education to be enshrined as the basic concept in educational policies. It went further:

"Every individual must be in a position to keep learning throughout his/her life. The idea of lifelong education is the keystone of the learning society. The lifelong concept covers all aspects of education, embracing everyone in it, with the whole being more than the sums of its parts. There is no such thing as a separate 'permanent' part of education, which is not lifelong. In other words, lifelong education is not an educational system but the principle, which accordingly underlies the development of each of its component parts" (Faure, 1972: 181-82).

It was with this call that the Governing Board of UNESCO Institute for Education approved in 1972 a research program on lifelong education which resulted in a number of publications including: "Foundations of Lifelong Education" by R. H. Dave, which came out in 1976. But despite these publications, the idea of lifelong learning did not become a practical state policy of most countries of the world until the concept was revived twenty years later. According to Dave, lifelong education covered "formal, non-formal and informal patterns of learning throughout the life cycle of an individual for the conscious and continuous enhancement of the quality of life, his own and that of society." But even if such a conception was countenanced for the developed part of the world, most Third World countries did not see the need to build their educational policies on the achievements of peasant communities - on their informal and non-formal education and learning systems.

The nomadic-pastoral communities in Africa have been the most marginalized in terms of the provision of educational facilities. Colonial and post-colonial policies on the whole have always been hostile to these communities as already pointed out above. The notion that pastoralists ought to be "settled" so that social services can be provided to them has always been the pretext for repressive and unfriendly policies towards pastoralists. Their mobility has added to the reluctance by governments to craft imaginative policies suited to nomadic conditions.

As a result of these failed policies, a number of questions have been raised in regard to the type of education and modalities for nomadic-pastoral education. These include: which type of education should be given to nomads? Should it be the normal-conventional education or should a special educational program be designed especially for nomads and pastoralists? Should it focus on literacy or should it be aimed at improving the social-economic conditions of nomads-pastoralists in their cultural contexts of pastoralism? Which type of education system should be promoted - should it respond to the mobile, nomadic culture or should it be located in permanent sites where the children and pastoral communities could return to after periods of mobility? What kinds of structures should be erected - should they be permanent buildings or should these structures be made up of collapsible materials and what kind of infrastructure should support it? (PARE, 2002:1).

These and other questions are posed and the purpose of this paper is to explore the means through which education could be made available to pastoral communities in the context of lifelong learning strategy. Our objective is to demonstrate that the information and communication technologies, including the Internet and email facilities can solve most of the problems that have been encountered by colonial and post-colonial governments in the past in providing a culturally and socially satisfying education to the pastoral communities, including those posed above.

Distance Education and E-learning

for Pastoral Communities

Distance education came to be recognized as the means by which people away from centers of high education could access education. The universities opened centers where adults could gain access to education after working hours. Later opportunities were opened for those students who had dropped out of the formal system to resume their education in the evening classes. This "extension" of education had drawn in millions of people into the arenas of higher learning that might otherwise not been able to obtain such an education. The idea that education can be extended to communities beyond the immediate university campus was given an even bigger boost with the inauguration of the idea of the Open University. This has become an institution of its own in making available university education to millions of people throughout the world. Today many people take it as right to have access to higher education, but this right does not extend to poor rural communities.

The potential for distance education has been made even more apparent with the emergence of the information and communication technologies. Such a situation should make education even more accessible than before if avenues for such further extension are opened up to the vast majority of the world population who has been marginalized. Two major international conferences have brought such a step nearer by recognizing the potentiality of lifelong learning and adult education. The Fifth International Conference on Adult Education (CONFINTEA V) held in Hamburg, Germany in 1997 and the World Education Forum held in Dakar, Senegal in April 2000, all upheld the Jomtien Declaration of 1990 which called for education at all levels being available to all who needed it as a right.

All these declarations have however had no meaning because constructive steps have not been taken to ensure that education is available to different social groups in society, especially those who have been marginalized throughout their lives. To be meaningful, education must have meaning for the lives of the people to whom it is imparted. It follows that education has to provide people with additional advantages that can be enjoyed and experienced in their lives. Technology plays a crucial role in this transformation in peoples lives. To achieve this, it must be creatively applied and used.

Experience in many countries demonstrates that computer environments, which have been used in education and training contexts, are very often reduced to a closed configuration. This often means that all software and information is grouped in such a way that the contribution of computer science becomes of secondary importance. However, hardware and software technologies today are well suited to experimentations and innovative utilization within the various approaches in education. The client-server and network approaches in particular, as well as other new software environments, have revolutionized the educational process, by opening a whole new dimension in methods of support for courses, a new relationship between instructor and student, new instructional methods, as well as creating steps towards virtual classrooms. This has created new opportunities that can be imparted to rural communities and their environments.

For example, at the Second Africa Telehealth Conference entitled "The Role of Low-Cost Technology for Improved Access to Public Health Care Programs Throughout Africa," which was held in Kampala, Uganda in April 10 - 14, 2001, it was noted that over 80% of healthcare problems in Africa were caused by a handful of communicable diseases and issues that remained untreated due to a lack of adequate healthcare coverage across all regions. The barriers of geography and technology, which combined to deny effective healthcare delivery in Africa, could effectively be addressed through the use of Telehealth, which would aim at developing local Telehealth services throughout the continent.

The goal of the conference was to examine how telecommunication resources, computer-based information systems, and appropriate health information infrastructures could be utilized to advance the general health conditions of African society, through improvements to quality, access, and management of health systems on the continent. The conference drew upon the collective knowledge of international experts in the areas of health systems organization and management, information technology, information systems, clinical care, epidemiology, telemedicine, health promotion, and health services policy.

The example of the use of Telehealth demonstrated the great potential, which lies in the use of information and communication technologies for educational purposes in pastoral communities. Pedagogical approaches that utilize telelearning offer immense opportunities for these communities. What is required is the provision of the necessary infrastructure. We need a quick and effective way to inculcate masses of previously uninformed peoples about the proper role of scientific methods in their day-to-day lives and in the life of the evolving African nations. It is possible for African countries to customize the tele-immersion environment, which emphasizes the critical aspects of the cultural heritages, history of the people in order to promote the process of African integration and the development of African culture generally, using highly effective virtual simulations. The Virtual Laboratory provides direct access to networks of world-class scientific research centers that are at the cutting edge of scientific and technological techniques. This would give Africans a remote, but sufficiently effective, view of many of the major innovations in this area.

Learning-Ware is an object-oriented development environment that is dedicated exclusively to the construction of virtual educational institutions. It could give Africa the capacity to custom-design and deploy a lifelong learning virtual instruction system that is geared to the exigencies of the African personality and culture. The Digital Library is a powerful system based on incredible transmission speed and prodigious data storage/handling capacity, which can be put to the use of a wide range of learners. The Digital Library utility is primarily used for multimedia content and can be combined with contemporary wireless technology, which is designed to deliver cost-effective high-speed transmission of voice, text, and video content anywhere in the African world. Its many uses are obvious for learners.

The applications of these information and communication technologies would increase dramatically Africa's ability to propagate and promote its vision, mores, values, ethics, ethos, and cultural aesthetics around the globe. The important thing is that the content of what we want to transmit to others has to reflect Africa's reality, not the reality of other peoples' visions about Africa, which are imported through imposed donor policies and program about Africa. At the same time, such an African reality must reflect the general humanistic traditions in education that can link Africa to other humanistic learning systems and ideas.

However it has to be realized that while the information and communication technologies provide these immense opportunities, the problem of carrying out this transformation is not a technical one. It has to be approached comprehensively to explore the epistemological basis of the knowledge, which is imparted for unless information is transmitted in a culturally contextualised way; the purpose of learning loses its value and usefulness. Education has to answer to the cultural-spiritual needs of individuals and the diverse communities. Rural African communities constitute something in the order of 80 per cent of the continent's population. It follows that for any education system to be useful to them, such a system must begin from the cultural-spiritual context of the people, which reflects their worldview and not the worldview of other peoples. Cross-cultural learning can only have meaning where the different cultural contexts are made explicit and clear.

For the education of adults, learning has to build on their prior acquired knowledge. Pastoral communities have a wealth of knowledge about their ecology and social environments. This knowledge has sustained them for centuries, if not millennia. The critical question is how can lifelong learning and education draw from this rich cultural experience to strengthen these communities and assist them to acquire new knowledge in a culturally satisfying way? Lifelong learning must build on these bases and promotes higher education among the pastoral communities through telelearning.

We agree with Dr. John C. Afele, of the University of Guelph, Ontario, Canada, when he states:

"The need is for the development of a knowledge system which is a blend of Africa's own indigenous knowledge base and that beyond its realm or Global Knowledge; a synthesized knowledge which would be translated into practical policy tools and which would undergo continuous evolution locally for its relevance to local peoples' needs. This requires a new partnership arrangement between the North and the South, between political leadership and civil society, between formal and informal sectors, between formally literate and illiterate, and between urban and rural communities. It requires a judicious blend between technological advances and indigenous cultures and peoples, and between human and natural environments." (Afele, 2001:6).

Therefore the task for the African intellectual is to define the basis of the African indigenous African communication systems for technology, culture and education, which should be brought into synchrony for an effective ICT-led practical program for rural communities. As Afele points out, a virtual network among African intellectuals and its interaction with rural African communities could convert the infamous "brain drain" syndrome into a brain enrichment and convergence, regardless of geographical location of the members involved. In short, not only does ICT make it possible for African intellectuals to reach remote villages, it also makes it possible for them who scattered across the continent and the Diaspora to converge and combine their intellectual resources for an African renaissance. It is only though these means that African intellectuals can intellectualize indigenous African knowledge for sustainable livelihoods for the African people (Afele, 2001).

Professor Tapio Varis of the University of Tampere, Finland, has argued for the building of a global higher education and learning which embraces all its functions and activities: teaching and academic programs, research and scholarship, staffing, students, buildings, facilities, equipment, services to the community and the academic environment. Nevertheless, he observes that due attention has to be paid to the specific institutional, national, and regional contexts in order to take into account diversity and avoid uniformity. This is the entry point for African intellectuals if he/she has to think globally while intellectualizing and acting locally.

Tapio Varis also argues that globalization, which is at the heart of the quickened development of the information and communication technologies, has been consolidated by invasion of higher education by these new technologies, especially the Internet. The development of these technologies make it possible for distance teaching institutions to strengthen their position in the educational landscape. They also pave the way for lifelong education for all and at the same time spread the traditional universities, more and more through distance learning, "thereby making the distinction between the two types of institutions virtually meaningless" (Varis, 2001).

This is the surest way of democratizing education and the generation, storage and utilization of knowledge. The Virtual University becomes a medium through which the gap between the formal university and the distance Open University is bridged. In this context, the technical questions do matter. Varis has promoted the creation of the Global University System (GUS), which is pioneering along with other institutions the closing of digital gap. This is intended to revolutionize telelearning and telemedicine through high-speed access to the Wide World Web through a two-way audio, full-motion video-conferencing, which require broadband Internet via international satellite and fiber-optic cables. This e-learning helps local community development, and at the same time it assures the close cooperation among higher, middle, and lower levels of education in teacher training, for example, or coursework and curriculum development (Utsumi, 2001).

In this way, the Global University System tries to improve the global learning environment for all people in the global knowledge society where all can share the responsibility and benefits in a global context of Global Knowledge. A central theme in this process is the sharing and exchange of knowledge among educational, research, industry and trade sectors, through egalitarian and culturally transparent methods to achieve improved learning, cooperating closely with people around the world. This involves the harnessing of the emerging technologies of broadband Internet connectivity among institutions of higher learning in developing countries in order to provide learners of all ages with a global e-learning across national and cultural boundaries. It also makes it possible for nurturing the intellectual development of youngsters around the world through creative competition for excellence and the coordination and facilitation of national and regional systems which support and complement the traditional institutions of learning and healthcare, by using conventional methods in tandem with advanced electronic media. This is where the challenge lies for the African intellectual to develop the necessary technical and cultural tools suited to the broadening of education in rural communities, including pastoral ones.

GUS/UGANDA

It is for the above reasons that we wish to embark on the establishment of the Global University System in Uganda along with other stake-holders. The main objectives of GUS/UGANDA will be to establish (i) electronic networking of small regional universities, regional research centers and institutes of learning (UgaNet), that will enhance interaction among these institutions and at the same time link them with communities to enable them engage in lifelong learning for its own sake and for the purposes enhancing their capacities to increase their productivity for poverty eradication, and (ii) set up Community e-Learning and Development Networks (CLDNs) whose aim and objective will be to link diverse rural communities for the purposes of knowledge sharing through exchange of experiences. Specifically, the objectives will be:

(a) To promote the establishment of a wireless or satellite broadband Internet linkages and networks for distance learning in small regional universities interse and to rural communities so they can have access to information, data, and education facilities; and at the same time promote the establishment of internet connection to healthcare centers and institutions in selected rural communities and to link them to schools, libraries, hospitals, and local governmental authorities.

(b) To promote the use of information and communication technologies to activities of economic development and wealth creation in the country by engaging farming and pastoral communities in improved agricutural and animal husbandary practices and to engage them in knowledge and information sharing by harnessing the emerging broadband connectivity to enhance these activites as web as improved welfare.

(c) To promote the establishment of tele-immersion environment in the country, which emphasizes the critical elements of the peoples' cultural heritages, history of the people as well as their lived experiences based on their indigenous knowledge systems (IKS) by linking them to research and to centers of learning and to promoting ICT to local language development and use in research, recording and retrieval.

(d) To create the Global University System in Uganda (GUS/UGANDA) in order to establish technological alternatives to promote the above objectives as well as promoting learning-ware, digital libraries, virtual laboratories and virtual universities and to combine them with high-speed wireless and satellite technology, which is designed to deliver cost-effective high speed transmission of voice, text, and video content anywhere in Africa and the world for purposes of promoting e-learning and telemedicine.

References

Afele, J.C (2001). Telehealth in Twenty-first Century Africa: African Knowledge and Ideas as Integral, http//Distance Education/telehealth Africa.html.

Castells, M (2000). End of Millennium, Blackwell, London.

Dave, R.H. (1976). Foundations of Lifelong Education, UNESCO, Paris.

PARE-The Pastoralist Resolve (2002). NGO Advocacy and Mobilization for Nomadic Education and Development: The Experience of Pastoral Resolve. Paper presented at the DFID Conference on Nomadic Education in Nigeria, Rock View Hotel. Abuja, Nigeria, January 16^th-19^th, 2002.

Varis, T (2001). The Goals of Global Learning in Perspectives, Tampere, Finland.

Utsumi, T., Varis, T., Knight, P., Method, F., Pelton, J. (2001). Using broadband to close the digital divide. InterMedia April, 2001, 29, 2, 4 - 8.
Retrieved on May 1, 2003 at:
http://www.friends-partners.org/GLOSAS/Manaus%20Workshop/Tinker%20Foundation/Application%20Form/Tinker_Proposal_Web/Appendices/Appendix-V_GLOSAS_Projects/Closing_Dig_Div_01152.htm

Author Biographical Sketch

Professor Dani Wadada Nabudere Executive Director Afrika Study Centre P. O. Box 961 Mbale, Uganda Tel: +256 77 503473 (Mobile) Tel: +256 45 35292 (Landline). Fax: +256 45 34461 walyemira@yahoo.com afriscent@infocom.co.ug

Dani Wadada Nabudere is Executive Director, Afrika Study Centre, Mbale. He coordinates with the Islamic University in Uganda, Mbale in different areas of interest. He has since 2001 carried out "field building" research activities in collaboration with the Washington-based Social Science Research Council, Program Committee on Global Security. This activity brings together academic researchers, practitioners, and indigenous knowledge custodians in an effort to pool knowledge. He has promoted the establishment of the Mandela African Peoples' College - a mobile folk high school for pastoral women and youth from Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania and New Sudan. Together with the Uganda National Council of Science and Technology, he has promoted the idea of the creation of ICT for e-learning in pastoral communities. Presently he is engaged in promoting the establishment of the Pan-African University for which he has entered into a collaboration arrangement with the University of South Africa (UNISA) with a view to developing the idea of an African renaissance institution of higher learning based in communities.