Mary-Ann Prince serves in the Research Group on Data, Artificial Intelligence, and Innovations for Digital Transformation, Johannesburg Business School, University of Johannesburg. Photo: Supplied
By Mary-Ann Prince and Abejide Ade-Ibijola
This opinion piece envisions a future South Africa where it is the young rural-based population that, from the age of six, will enjoy the journey that will unfold in their rural communities through social innovations.
They will be able to join the gig economy through their technical skills and solve complex business problems by creating technological innovations that are globally competitive from a uniquely South African environment.
Challenges to this vision
It is known to many that rural schools in South Africa face numerous challenges. These include, but are not limited to, access to learning resources (such as books, state-of-the-art computers, internet connectivity, electricity, etc.), inexperienced teachers, and unspecialised teachers that teach across grade levels.
These impediments have a negative bearing on education in rural areas. Learning outcomes are difficult to achieve in the context of dilapidated and vandalised buildings, lacking essential services such as water.
The fact that initiatives such as the national broadband roll-out do not translate into action in rural communities and internet access remains out of reach makes it challenging for the country to achieve Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 4, such as the quality education for all.
SDG 4 advocates “achieving inclusive and equitable quality education and promoting lifelong learning opportunities for all”.
It specifically advocates the extension of opportunities from Early Childhood Development to tertiary and vocational training through essentially what should be lifelong learning.
Importantly, this quality education needs to occur in a non-discriminatory environment, including access for all gender and the disabled.
Universality is a distant prospect when children in some first-world countries are taught programming at primary school level, while rural children are struggling to have access to a basic classroom set-up and quality of learning.
This difference in societal class became evident during the Covid-19 pandemic as the world moved online but learning had to stop in several schools in rural areas of South Africa, and other disadvantaged places around the world.
Unless a rural child is educated about possibilities in the world, in school, their world will remain that of following in the footsteps of their parents who, in some cases are either entry-level, blue-collar workers or fully reliant on social grants.
Without quality education, there is no end in sight to the intergenerational transmission of deprivation poverty.
Introducing children to computers and technology should be ranked among the most viable solution to achieving SDG 4. This is also the perfect time, in the wake of advances in Artificial Intelligence (AI), and tools such as Chat-GPT, threatening to automate several creative jobs.
Goldman Sachs has predicted that 300 million jobs will be lost or degraded. There is already a high rate of unemployment in these communities, and there is an opportunity to skill up children if there is access to quality education.
The question is: How can technology help?
Children are not taught how to hold a pencil because it is assumed that they will all become writers one day. Similarly, they are not introduced to technology with the intention that they will all become computer programmers.
Hence, teaching concepts of robotics and programming has been proven to aid the development of children in critical thinking, and introducing technology at all levels of education automatically meets the relevant skills sub-goal included in SDG4.
The lack of technological and digital literacy will defeat the SDG sub-goal of relevant skills. Equitable and quality education cannot be defined without the inclusion of technology – 21st-century skills are all based on computing and digital skills, and without them, the future looks bleak, especially for rural populations in South Africa and Africa at large.
Technological interventions
The technologies (and other interventions) that can assist in the facilitation of quality education in rural areas of South Africa include:
⦁ shared-mobile facilities for learners to gain access. An example is an ongoing doctoral research project at the Johannesburg Business School (JBS), that involves the design of a R3.4 million truck to take technological education to rural areas of South Africa. (Working on this project is the doctoral candidate Mary-Ann Prince, supervised by Professor Abejide Ade-Ibijola.)
⦁ immersive virtual reality experiences designed to simulate the equipment that is not available in rural areas. An example is a chemical experiment in virtual reality, a project recently completed at the JBS Innovation Lab at the University of Johannesburg.
⦁ use of serious games, or educational games for learning.
⦁ deployment of skilled tutors/mentors to these rural areas. (Universities may partner with the government to send IT students to rural areas during semester breaks to host digital boot camps that allow young people to learn online.)
⦁ exploration of AI tools to support learning such as Chat-GPT.
Tech toolkit to upskill:
Technological topics that we recommend for teaching in schools include:
⦁ logical reasoning and problem-solving with puzzles (from the age of six).
⦁ introduction to computer programming for learners (from the age of eight), using platforms such as Scratch.
⦁ introduction to Python programming and algorithms by the age of 12.
Mary-Ann Prince and Abejide Ade-Ibijola serve in the Research Group on Data, Artificial Intelligence, and Innovations for Digital Transformation, Johannesburg Business School, University of Johannesburg.
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