The End of Textbooks?

If Nnenna Nwakanma had her way there would never be another school textbook scandal in Limpopo (where books for 2012 have still not been delivered) or anywhere else in Africa.
She was the keynote speaker at a technology in education conference - e/merge 2012 - which was launched yesterday at the University of Cape Town and is being held online for 2 weeks. I went to the face-to-face launch yesterday evening. It was a cold rainy evening but that wasn't the reason why there weren't very many people there. Most of the participants were sitting at home or in offices in other parts of South Africa, Nigeria, Uganda and 18 other countries in Africa and beyond. This included Nnenna who was speaking from her home in West Africa. She talked of having a dream which would revolutionize teaching and learning throughout Africa. You have to have a lot of confidence to reprise Martin Luther King's "I have a dream" speech. That is exactly what Nnenna has in spades. To that she added a very different, awe-inspiring dream of universal literacy, electrification, large-scale internet access and massive bandwidth which would facilitate learning, communication and social networking in the remotest parts of our continent. Even I, who have never twittered a tweet or placarded a facebook wall, and who prefers reading a book to reading a kindle, could see that this would revolutionize all our existing institutions of education.