Since last one decade or more, government across Africa has realised the importance of investment in building broadband capacity as a tool to economic development and this policy has been the centre to their growth policy. As per World Bank, for every 10 percent penetration of broadband in a developing economy, there is typically 1.38 percent increase in GDP. Access to internet in Africa is more influenced by mobile penetration, as more and more people tend to use their mobile phones to access internet, than their computers. Mobile penetration in some of the African countries are as high as 119%, which provides an excellent opportunity for businesses and organisations to reach them through mobile.
Cloud Computing as per the US National Institute of Science and Technology is “a model for enabling ubiquitous, convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications, and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction.” Or in a comman-man language it simply refers to consumption of infrastructure and application services on a utility basis, paid per unit consumed. As the Cloud becomes fundamental to the world of information and communications technology (ICT), it delivers major benefits for both low and high income countries.
Cloud Computing allows significant flexibility in the choice of end-user devices linking the user to information applications. Many institutions across globe use Cloud Computing to bring services to their patrons. Cloud applications enable centralised implementation of academic and administrative services on campus wide basis.
Ghana has always been an integral part of studies conducted by various agencies and service providers on implementation of Cloud in Africa. As early as 2006, HP and UNESCO launched a pilot project in Africa to create the first African regional university network through distributed computing and to help reduce the number of skilled workers, scientists, academics and researchers that leave the region. KNUST from Ghana was among the first five universities along with universities from Nigeria, Senegal, Algeria and Zimbabwe to be a part of this pilot project. In 2011 Ericsson lead a project to introduce Cloud Computing in school in Africa under their Connect to Learn initiative in which Ghana was a partner. 2014 report by Harvard Business Review Analytic Services “Business Agility in the Cloud” conducted a survey that found that 70% of organisations were using Cloud services.
Usage of Cloud Computing in education would bridge the technology and information divide between privileged and underprivileged institutions, as it allows access to educational resources to high number of learners, without having access to their desktops. Cloud Computing, especially with relation to mobile learning, will improve the current institutional system of education, and also the quality and affordability of education. Mobile broadband and Cloud Computing will bring far reaching changes in education in classrooms in Africa – for both students and teachers. Internet access not only provides a wealth of educational information for tutors and students attending schools but will also allows them to reach out to each other, and to the world.
Stakeholders in Cloud Computing should develop solutions which can be delivered across low speed networks also and focus on educational development and research across all section of the academic community. As per a Global Forecasts to 2020 by www.marketsandmarkets.com published in December 2015, Cloud Computing in education is going to be an industry worth USD 15.05 Billion by 2020 from USD 5.83 Billion in 2015, growing at an Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 20.8%. At this expected high growth rate, there exists an opportunity for institutions to take more advantage by incorporating this technological advancement into their day to day execution. This will not only enable efficient management of business processes and effective knowledge delivery to students, but also will result in higher student engagement, better collaboration among stakeholders, and improved student performance. It is quite commendable that some of the pubic and private universities in Ghana have already realised the importance of Cloud Computing within their setup and incorporated the same. Few among them are UPS, BlueCrest and Ashesi. Service providers, such as Google, IBM, Microsoft and Ericsson, have also taken keen interest in providing solutions to hosts of education institutions across continent and promoting research and development in Cloud Computing with institutions of higher learning.
All HE institutions across the continent must embrace Cloud Computing for reaching out to cross section of the academic community and also to reduce their cost of hosting expensive hardware and software applications at their site. Cloud is the way forward for a sustainable education development in Africa.
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