Learning in Namibia: an opportune solution or an impediment to learning? – The case at the University of Namibia

Access to education is among the many challenges that African countries face. According to a Report of the International Commission on Education for the Twenty First Century to UNESCO, many African countries are unable to provide access to primary education for all, let alone secondary and tertiary education. Many promote technology-facilitated learning, also known as eLearning, as an antidote to the access problem. This paper describes the author’s personal experience and analysis of eLearning in a Computer Literacy distance education course at the University of Namibia. Specifically, the paper attempts to establish whether the use of eLearning improved or hindered access to education. The paper concludes that, while eLearning clearly has a potential to eradicate problems associated with access to education, it is at the moment, not an appropriate solution in the Namibian context, as eLearning in itself generated more exclusion problems that made education beyond reach. Although the results found are based on observations that were made for a single course at the University of Namibia, they can help us understand some of the factors that can hinder the success of eLearning in other courses and higher education institutions in similar settings.