03 October, 2018

From 24 to 26 September 2018, the Ministry of Education of Ethiopia, UNESCO Headquarters, UNESCO-IICBA and UNESCO Liaison Office in Addis Ababa launched the policy workshop on developing a national ICT in education policy and master plan for Ethiopia with the financial support of WeiDong Cloud Education Group in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. National participants of the workshop were ICT specialists from different Universities in Ethiopia, the Federal TVET Agency, the Ministry of Education and the Oromia Education Bureau. The main objectives of the workshop were to develop the national ICT in education policy and master plan by incorporating open educational resources, enhancing the capacity of the Government and planning next steps through to completion, which include a wider consultation, finalization, adoption and launch. Dr. Temechegn Engida, UNESCO-IICBA Program Officer, and Ms. Annika Weigele, UNESCO-IICBA Intern, attended the workshop on behalf of UNESCO-IICBA.

The first day began with a welcoming speech by Mr. Teshome Lemma, the State Minister for Educational Training and Strategies of the Ministry of Education in Ethiopia, who officially opened the workshop. Dr. Yumiko Yokozeki, Director of UNESCO-IICBA, and Dr. Fengchun Miao, Chief of the Unit for ICT in Education from UNESCO Headquarters, also gave welcoming speeches. The workshop continued with a presentation by Dr. Engida on establishing and enabling the policy environment and a presentation by Mr. Dai Shen, Senior Vice President from WeiDong Cloud Education Group, on the promotion of smart education for Sustainable Development Goal 4 through partnership building. Afterwards, Dr. Miao shared UNESCO’s international experiences and lessons learnt on policy development and open licensing. Afterwards, Dr. Dawit Mekonnen presented the draft outline of the current policy document and Mr. Desalegn Shanko, consultant for BSB Center for Development Research, outlined the current state of the ICT policy in Education in Ethiopia.

During the second and the third days of the workshop, the participants worked in three groups to develop draft policy documents for the three different sectors: General Education, Higher Education and Technical and Vocational Training. On the last day of the workshop, the draft documents were presented by each group. It was then decided that these documents will be further refined separately and then synthesized into one policy document through various consultative workshops that will take place in the coming months, which will become the new ICT in Education Policy in Ethiopia.