South African distance education widens its scope as Technikon SA moves into Botswana
David Macfarlane
South African distance education took a major step forward last month when Technikon SA (TSA) opened offices in Gaborone, Botswana, as part of its provincial operations.
An initiative of TSA’s regional office in Mmabatho, North West province, the move expands TSA’s already extensive operations throughout Africa. Regional TSA offices in each of South Africa’s nine provinces are augmented by links with Ethiopia, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritius, Morocco, Kenya, Rwanda, Zambia and Zimbabwe. TSA has 60 000 students in total.
North West regional director Nathan Molusi comments: ”At present the Mmabatho office has approximately 250 Botswana citizens registered as learners. These learners, however, register on an ad hoc basis through information gained and registrations made through the South African media. They are, also, entirely dependent on the cross-border office in Mmabatho for administrative and back-up support. We have therefore felt for a while that the time has come to provide a new direction and be more systematic with our dealings with Southern African neighbours like Botswana.”
Molusi and his colleague Professor Michael Lawrence, a policy researcher in TSA’s Institute for Public Management and Development, conducted a policy research feasibility study with the aim of improving TSA’s infrastructural support and capacity for learners in Botswana. The research was conducted within the policy frameworks and principles of the Southern African Development Community’s (SADC) Protocol on Education and Training and the 1993 Botswana National Commission on Education.
Commenting on these frameworks, Lawrence says, ”Both policy documents make strong arguments for the development of distance education in the SADC region as an alternative to the over-dependence on residential education and training. We all felt the need to explore the practical implications of these arguments as a basis for future expansion and regional change.
”It is absolutely crucial that proactive efforts like ours be done within the proper education policy frameworks and development principles,” Lawrence adds. ”Ignoring these frameworks merely reduces educational planning and development to piecemeal and ad hoc interventions leading to under-performance, ineffective strategic planning and non-sustainable delivery.”
Molusi and Lawrence’s research involved a month of interviews and fieldwork in Botswana. Government, civil society, the private sector, parastatals and other key education and training service providers were among the stakeholders they interviewed. They conducted their research in close cooperation with Botswana’s Ministry of Education, to which they submitted their research report in May.
All the research planning, administration and interviews were conducted in close cooperation with Botswana’s Ministry of Education, with which the final research report was tabled. TSA was then given the go-ahead.
TSA is now expected to work closely with the stakeholders they interviewed, as well as the University of Botswana and the Botswana College of Distance and Open Learning (BOCODOL), both of which are already involved in distance education initiatives in Botswana.
So what concrete benefits will now flow from TSA’s move into Botswana? Molusi and Lawrence’s research indicated a host of opportunities, including:
l A need to provide quality distance education in SADC countries, particularly where present residential modes of delivery are unable to absorb continued social demand for learning;
l Promotion of distance education as a viable and internationally recognised mode of educational delivery and development ranging from certificates, diplomas, bachelors, master’s and doctoral programmes;
l Collaborative delivery ventures and information sharing with institutions in Botswana such as the University of Botswana and BOCODOL;
l Provision of continuous technical training to Botswana’s mining houses, telecommunications and the private sector;
l Institutional support for the growing need for short non-formal courses based on clients’ immediate education and development needs.
With these opportunities in view, TSA’s North West regional office has developed a strategic implementation plan. This plan involves detailed steps for the effective capacity-building and organisational growth of the new Gaborone office. For example:
l Establishment, training and capacity building of permanent office staff in Gaborone;
l Training of locally based Botswana staff to assist in resourcing the office;
l Comprehensive advertising awareness campaign aimed at Botswana residents involving regular flighting on key radio stations and in various Botswana-based newspapers;
l Advocacy campaigns on radio and television and in the press on the concept of distance education and its vital importance in education and development in SADC and beyond;
l Exhibitions of all TSA courses and programmes at key expos and conferences;
l Planning of intensive education and training workshops on programmes and course needs with key Botswana clients such as mining houses, security firms, teacher colleges, private business, NGOs, civil society, and universities and colleges. Academic divisions of TSA will include economics and management sciences, applied community sciences, public safety and criminal justice, and applied natural sciences.
”We are well under way now in setting up operations through an agency. This agency may well develop over time depending on social demand,” Molusi says. ”We have exciting times ahead. We believe that this intervention is a partnership of equals between Botswana providers and ourselves.”
The entire intervention is also carefully dovetailed with South Africa’s national higher education plan, which Minister of Education Kader Asmal released in March. It calls for a merger of TSA, Unisa and Vista University’s Distance Education Centre. Together these institutions will become a mega distance-education provider comprising over 200 000 learners.
TSA’s move into Botswana is also in line with the national education plan’s policy of increasing recruitment of students from SADC states at South African institutions. The plan says that SADC students will from next year be treated as South African students for subsidy purposes.
”We have for some time felt that the concept of the ‘African renaissance’ should have life breathed into it,” Lawrence says. ”Endless debates about the meaning of such a renaissance are counter-productive. The basics of the educational component of the concept are clear: to improve educational opportunity and the quality of life both within and beyond South Africa. The role of distance education in the renaissance is unquestionable because by its very nature distance education delivery knows no spatial boundaries or geographical borders.”