Kenya opens education IT development hub

The Ministry of Education has launched a national ICT Integration and Innovation Centre (NI3C) at the Nairobi University’s Kenya Science Campus to serve as a development hub for effective use of ICT in education and training. The main training centre has a 40 seat computer lab fully equipped with 40 computers, and two additional 20 seat fully equipped computer labs. The computers are running on Windows operating system licensed by the Ministry of Education though there are a few open source softwares being used. A modern server room hosts the National Education Portal for teachers, the NI3C website and the National Helpdesk site as well as a number of applications. The facility has a resource centre to support research and development related works. Minister for Education, Professor Sam Ongeri expressed his mission, in the launching, to see all Kenyan children accessing equal education, as well as a gender balance in the schools with ICT to boost the quality of teaching and learning in the schools. According to Ongeri, “ICT in education is not all about the technology, but about the teaching and learning process. This centre provides a great opportunity for teachers to interact with other teachers from across the world and share knowledge.” The centre is expected to enable developers demonstrate the application of ICT technologies and new pedagogic aspects of ICT in teaching and learning. In addition, the centre is expected to provide guidance to education managers on ICT innovations and integration aspects. The establishment of the facility is in partnership with the Flemish Development Cooperation, Smoothtel and other education stakeholders, still with plans to have a wide array of partnerships in order to transform Kenya’s ICT education sector.

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