The Challenge

Despite efforts made to incorporate ICT into mainstream curriculum, Uganda’s education system is still rooted in the traditional rote approach with very limited scope for the application of concepts- notably the problem of access to modern technology platforms to keep pace with learning and teaching in the 21st century. The education system continues to confront key challenges at all education levels: access to, quality of, and relevance of education. The COVID-19 pandemic demanded that we rethink the trajectories to diffuse eLearning or any other means to augment or replace our traditional classroom-centric educational delivery systems. According to the Ministry of Education, more than 73,000 learning institutions closed, and consequently, 15 million learners and 600,000 refugee learners were out of school during the COVID-19 pandemic. This crisis exposed us to a new need for more equitable access to online education. However, the majority of EIs do not have the capacity to deliver complete online programs. This presents an opportunity to use eLearning to improve delivery and create resilience. The ultimate intention of the initiative is to build the resilience of EIs to move beyond survival by empowering them to cope through deepening eLearning, skilling instructors and students in the use of digital technologies to teach and learn, while deliberately including lower-income youths, refugees, women, and people with disabilities.