"Education is essential for vision 2035"

Education has been described as the pivot in the attainment of Cameroon’s Vision 2035.

This assessment was made by the Director of African Centre for ICTs in Education and Development, Kinsley Ndenge.

According to him, today’s students have not just changed incrementally from those of the past, nor simply changed their slang, clothes, body adornments, or styles, as has happened between generations previously.

“A really big discontinuity has taken place. One might even call it a “singularity” – an event which changes things so fundamentally that there is absolutely no going back. This so-called “singularity” is the arrival and rapid dissemination of digital technology in the last decades of the 20th century.” He said.

Kinsley defines millennials as those born between the early 1980’s and early 2000’s.

He added that this generation learns predominantly using the internet and they may find traditional educational models boring.

This, he says it’s very serious, because the single biggest problem facing education today is that our Digital Immigrant instructors, who speak an outdated language (that of the pre-digital age), are struggling to teach a population that speaks an entirely new language.

The question according to Kinsley is, if there has been sufficient advancement in internet technologies in Cameroon to cater for this NET Generation? “Education is fundamental to achieving the goals set out in the vision 2035 policy document.

Without the creation of global citizens, who are able to adequately understand their world and use this understanding of the world to solve current contextual problems, we may be dancing in circles, teaching for problems that we faced during the industrial age.” the ICT expert explained.

He believes that learning and knowledge has become so complex that simply studying in a classroom can never expose a student to the vast amount of knowledge and learning resources that exist in the world today.

“In fact, we need to redefine the word illiteracy from an inability to read and write, to the inability to find information, and gain knowledge by using the internet.” He insist.

With the arrival of Nextell 3G networks in Cameroon with faster internet speeds and the possibility of mobile learning, Kinsley says, there is hope that our students would be able to learn from the mountain of knowledge available on the internet.

He however explained that for an emergent nation and for an educated Cameroonian population by 2035, and that we need not just improve on internet connection speeds, but also on internet affordability and accessibility.

“As a nation, we need to rethink the concept of education, educating our youth for the future, not of the past. We need to make sure we are not left behind in the current technological and IT revolution in Education.” Kinsley Ndenge concluded.