On Monday 7th March 2022, took place online the official launch webinar of the training of master teachers, radio and television personnel from ECOWAS countries, as part of UNESCO ECOWAS Joint response to COVID-19.

In fact, the Following the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic globally, ECOWAS and UNESCO signed a Joint Statement and developed a work plan in July 2020 to support member states to mitigate the effects of the pandemic in the fields of education, science and culture.

Within the education component of the Joint response, the UNESCO International Institute for Capacity Building in Africa (IICBA) Addis Ababa, developed modules for a training programme for master teachers, radio and tele vision technical staff in the three languages of the ECOWAS region (English, French and Portuguese). The modules were validated by national experts of the beneficiary countries and the technical training package has been uploaded on the IICBA Virtual Campus is now ready for rollout.

The key objectives of this training programme are the following:

·         Build teachers’ capacities in planning and delivering distance education;

·         Train teachers in the use of digital content and technology based solutions;

·         Train radio and TV technical staff in supporting education programmes, and facilitating teaching and learning activities ;

·         Promote increased access to education for children during crisis and emergency situations;

·         Improve the quality of teaching and learning in the region; and

·         Train teachers and school heads in elaborating and managing user-friendly evaluation materials for distance learning.

The next and final stage of the programme is the 7 weeks online training programme for the selected master teachers, radio and television personnel from the countries. The training has been officially launched during a webinar hold on Monday, 7th March 2022”, in three linguistic sessions (English, French and Portuguese). The English session were monitor by the Director of UNESCO IICBA: Yumiko Yokozeki, while the French and Portuguese session were monitor by the Director of UNESCO Office in Dakar: Dimitri Sanga.

For this cohort 234 participants are enrolled. The participants are from three African French-speaking countries (Benin, Cote d’Ivoire, Senegal), four English-speaking countries (Gambia, Ghana, Liberia and Nigeria), and one Portuguese-speaking country (Cabo Verde).

Both Directors encouraged the participants to involve themselves in this seven-week online training in order to make this ECOWAS UNESCO Joint response to COVID-19, in the area of education, a success, and a real support to country members.

The link to the video of the webinar: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BEwzWMaCunQ