VISCED on Mali fragment

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ICT in education initiatives

ICT in Education in Mali

Oerview

Mali has a national policy and strategic plan for ICT, administered through the Information and Communications Technology Agency (AGETIC). One of its missions is to set up an empowering environment for the promotion and use of ICT in education and capacitybuilding for the formal and non-formal sectors. Though certain challenges obstacles persist -- such as a very low level of development of the telephone networks and no direct access to an Internet backbone -- a number of actors, including the Ministry of Education, local and international public and private partnerships, and many others, remain committed to enhancing Mali’s education system. Notable Initiatives in the formal system include a university intranet, the Nepad e-Schools Demo project, Internet in schools, SchoolNet Mali and, in non formal education, the UNESCO Community Multimedia Centre Scale-Up Project which enables ICT access for villages.

Country Profile

Mali is a landlocked West African country with a surface area of 1.24 million square kilometres and a population of about 13.5 million people, 73% of which live in rural areas. The population density is very disproportionate, from 90 people per square kilometre in the Niger central delta to less than five people per square kilometre in the north Saharan region. A former French colony, Mali (Sudan Republic) became independent in 1960. Its capital is Bamako (population: 840,000). It shares its borders with Mauritania and Algeria on the north, Niger on the east, Burkina Faso and Côte d’Ivoire on the south, Guinea on the southwest, and Senegal on the east. The highest point is Hombori Tondo in the central region of the country. Table 1 provides some selected socio-economic indicators for the country

Virtual initiatives in schools

Thèse: La fad et les tice au service de la professionnalisation des enseignants au mali une approche evaluative de dispositifs experimentaux

The training of teachers, particularly those of the first cycle of basic education is at the epicenter of educational issues that arise in Mali. Indeed, measures of macroeconomic adjustment in the 1980s led the country at that time to the closure of schools and teacher training to early retirement of most experienced teachers. A decade later, the international community took a stand Jomtien Education for All (EFA). The pursuit of this objective has required the implementation of alternative strategies including the opening of education to private and community and the use of contract teachers, under the Ten-Year Programme of Development of Education (PRODEC). Contract teachers are theoretically unemployed graduates of various training profiles. But there is also meeting with school leavers without qualifications. They receive training from 30 to 45 days before being poured into education. If they have the advantage of being less expensive than professional teachers, they are also less well trained. The proliferation of types of schools (public, private, community, basic schools, village schools, etc...) Induced a policy of opening up education to private and community combined with the massive teaching staff with qualifications and skills is variable, and most often very low, has undoubtedly helped accelerate the pace of enrollment in Mali. However, these measures have led to a de-professionalization of teachers and the segmentation status of teachers, with the resulting low requirement with respect to the quality of teaching-learning situations. To address this problem, the Ministry of Education has developed and adopted in 2003 a policy of initial and continuing training of teachers. This policy develops distance learning and ICT integration in education as alternatives to the professionalization of teachers in a relatively short time and at lower cost. Thus, through various partnerships, experiments have been initiated at the institutional level: the program of training teachers through Interactive Radio (FIER) with support from USAID in 2004 and the project in 2006 from Cyber_Edu a partnership agreement between UNCTAD, the Canton of Geneva and the Ministry of Communication and New Technologies (MCNT) acting on behalf of the Government of Mali.

References

Babacar Fall, ICT in Education in Mali, SURVEY OF ICT AND EDUCATION IN AFRICA: Mali Country Report, June 2007

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