ICDE Francophone OER Project
Supporting the implementation of the UNESCO OER Recommendation in francophone Africa
Seizing the opportunity of the UNESCO OER recommendation’s unanimous adoption by 195 member states in 2019, the French Ministry for Higher Education, Research and Innovation (MESRI) and ICDE established a Francophone OER expert working group early 2020. It was created to tap into the ICDE global, OER expert network to support Francophone African and French partners and stakeholders with the implementation of the UNESCO OER recommendation on a regional basis.
The working group is composed with representatives from the French Ministry for Higher Education, Research and Innovation, the French Digital University (UNIT, AUNEGe and UOH), the Virtual Universities of Senegal, Mali and Republic of Congo. Representatives from UNESCO Headquarters, the French National Commission for UNESCO, the French UNESCO Chair in OER and the International Organization of la Francophonie.
The ICDE Francophone Africa Project was born within this collaboration. The initiative aims to develop OER capacity building and supportive policies by connecting national and institutional stakeholders (ministerial and educational leadership level), through joint workshops. Through the potential of up-scaling and extending the concept to other countries and regions, the initiative will also promote and reinforce international cooperation.
In September 2020, the project was formally supported by UNESCO. It was agreed that this project would build on and supplement the findings and results from a parallel project led in the region and other regions of the world to support the implementation of the UNESCO OER Recommendation. The project team is therefore working in close collaboration with UNESCO Dakar and OER Africa to map capacity building and policy support needs in several countries in the francophone Africa region. UNESCO Dakar will organize a Forum after the first pilot Workshop organized within the ICDE Francophone OER Project, which will take place 19 October. The Forum will target high level authorities in the Ministries of Education, Research, Innovation and Youth. The Workshop took place on 9 June and targetted key contacts in the same Ministries as well as in Universities, Civil Society and International Organizations. The countries covered by both the Forum and the pilot Workshop are Senegal, Burkina, Mali, Togo, Benin, Ivory Coast, Republic of Congo, Burundi and Gabon.
The project is also aligned with the French adaptation to a course on “Open education, copyright and open licensing in a digital world”, LIDA 103, created in English by ICDE partner OERu. The French translation, technical and cultural adaptation LIDA103fr, has been done within the working group and used as a capacity building tool for the Francophone project.
Read more about the Workshop 9 June here (content in French).
Read more about other global events where the project will be presented here.
Read more and register to the LIDA103fr course here.
Supported by UNESCO and l’Université Numérique