Beira Part 2

This is my second trip to Beira. I was here same time last year. Time has stood still in the sleepy suburb where I stay. Same old men on crutches leaning on the seawall – victims of land mines. Same breathtakingly beautiful girls looking for pickups in the MiraMar beach café, Bob Dylan must have had Beira in mind when he sang about Mozambique in 1976.

I’m here on a project to introduce educational technology – e-learning, tele-classrooms, interactive broadcasting, stuff like that – to universities in seven African countries. What on earth’s the point of that, you say, when people are malnourished and most don’t have access to electricity. And you’re right to ask.

The logic goes something like this. The leaders in most countries – particularly in less developed ones – tend to be university graduates. If the quality of those graduates is poor, you get bad leadership. (Garbage in garbage out is the brutal analogy.) Of course it's not as simple as that. Venality has a part to play - but that's for another programme.

African universities have on the whole not served their societies well for many years, mainly because of poor teaching. Now, on top of that, you have overwhelming numbers of students, which makes even the best teachers’ jobs almost impossible.

Educational technology attacks on both fronts. It forces the academics to redesign their courses with the learner in mind. Interactivity, autonomous discovery, reflection: these are some of the things that shape e-learning.

It can also help with the numbers. When the student gets turned away from the lecture theatre because it’s already crammed with 457 others, she can retreat to the internet café and usually get a far better learning experience than straining to read the lecturer’s scrawl on the white board.

So this programme is transforming higher education in Africa? Well not yet, but every little helps.

And it’s great working with these people. They’re so up for it – the university teachers and the students. The students are beginning to drive the process. The majority – a couple of years ago - had never touched a computer. Now they’re getting smart phones and demanding learning materials on line. Their world is expanding at warp factor 8.

And Beira's a place to enjoy at the end of the day. The beer's OK and the best fish you’ve ever tasted costs £1.50. And the sunsets...