HOW DO WE ENHANCE TECHNOLOGICAL ADVANCEMENT AND DIGITAL LITERACY IN AFRICA

Technology is our “life facilitator” in recent years, but most elderly people in Africa possess little or no knowledge about what technology is all about. Carl Sagan once said “We’ve arranged a civilization in which most crucial elements profoundly depend on science and technology.” If this statement is true, then we are unfair to have arranged a civilization with crucial elements depending on technology while others still lack knowledge of what technology is all about. Recently, I was baffled at the rate at which most elderly people in Africa underrate technology. I learnt that it is primarily because they possess little or no knowledge about what technology is all about.

Also, over the years, it is increasingly popular to see African youths use computer for video games but are unable to carry out basic educational tasks with computers. As a young and energetic Cameroonian, I am deeply concerned about this paradox and fervently seeking proposals on how we can alleviatte computer illiteracy among African youths. Today, it has become common to dismiss that students taking STEM courses without computer science or Information technologies do not need to own personal computers. At first glance, one may be tempted to think that education can go as efficiently without computer because people had been succeeding in education ages before computers were invented, however, this is not the case. The latent foundation of this general assertion is the notion that personal computers are unaffordable to the average Cameroonian student. Ultimately, as more kids acquire personal computers, they use it for every other task but education. They end up not being able to harness the power of personal computers and the internet. During this period of the pandemic, most schools intended to deliver lectures online, but it was ineffective in Cameroon because most students couldn’t meet up with the requirements.

The question now is “HOW DO WE ENHANCE TECHNOLOGICAL ADVANCEMENT AND DIGITAL LITERACY IN AFRICA?”