Makerere to Get $2.5m Digital Library

By David Muwanga, New Vision (Kampala)

12/7/07

Makerere University is to get a $2.5m digital library, a top official announced this week. The move is part the education ministry's plan to promote the use of information and communications technology (ICTs) in schools, the official added.

"The project is one of the initiatives to have appropriate information and communications technology equipment and infrastructure," Nsumba Lyazi, the assistant commissioner for secondary education, said.

Other initiatives, he disclosed, include the cyber school technology solution aimed at improving science teaching in secondary schools. This, he said, would cover 100 schools in the first phase.

Lyazi said the ministry would establish a computing and information science centre at Makerere University to house 6,000 computers.

It would also introduce a computer science degree at Busitema University.

"All these seek to ensure that over the next decade, all schools and institutions will be connected to the Internet, have teachers trained to impact ICT skills to students and use them as a pedagogical tool," Lyazi said at a workshop at Hotel Africana, Kampala.

"We also want to have a digitised curriculum and resource centres and to have access to digitised teaching and learning materials," he said in a paper he presented under the theme "An overview of ICT in the ministry of education and sports."

The commissioner said the number of students taking ICT courses had increased since 2002.

In 2002, he added, there were only 186 students taking ICT-related courses.

The number of students shot up to 654 in 2003 and 1,120 in 2004, then up to 1,755 in 2005 and 2,390 in 2006.

"We are in the process of finalising the advanced level computer syllabus.

"We have almost completed a refurbishment centre for old computers to be located at Kyambogo College School where students will learn and maintain computers," Lyazi told the participants.