Pan-African/Global African Digital Consortium

 

Dr. Mohamed Camara and a team of interdisciplinary faculty are working with US-based and African organizations and institutions to spearhead the Pan-African/Global African Digital Consortium. This comes after the Department of African Studies (DAS) and the Center for African Studies (CfAS) at Howard University, in collaboration with the State of the African Diaspora, and Distance Education for Africa (DeAfrica), successfully hosted the international virtual symposium on Digital Learning in Global Africa During and After the COVID-19 Pandemic on November 8-9, 2021.

It has been established that the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has disproportionately impacted Africans and peoples of African descent in critical areas such as healthcare, food security, and education. The pandemic has exacerbated the disadvantages that many of these communities already faced in terms of access to decent economic, financial, infrastructural, and technological resources and, by the same token, made teaching and learning more exacting for both teachers and students.

Universities in the United States and other advanced countries, including HBCUs, as well as predominantly Black institutions in Central and South America and some African universities, have devised effective teaching and learning means and methods that can be further developed into potent resources within a global Pan-African system of higher learning. Universities in Africa and the Global African Diaspora (GAD) can and should create transnational networks of integrated digital platforms, digitize library and archival resources, and train educators and researchers in the professional use of the integrated platforms for teaching and research. This, in turn, will effectively prepare faculty to master the techniques of digital education and research. It will also enable the participating institutions to collaboratively discover and create knowledge, integrate contemporary learning management systems (LMS), and efficiently educate current and future generations of students. Look out for more information on the Pan-African/Global African Digital Consortium.