Wednesday 8 April 2020

The Focus (120): Covid-19, digital divide and the rise of online education


If there is one gargantuan development challenge the framers of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) wouldn’t have envisaged, it is the possibility of a global shut down. And that is exactly what has happened because of Covid-19. As the innovative cover of the Economist of 21 March 2020 puts it, the world is literally “closed.”

Like many workers around the world, I am working from home. I wrote this piece from home, because the world has shut down, making the home both the family abode and the workplace. Before the year 2020, working from home was a ‘luxury’ accepted by employers to give flexibility to employees. Today, it is the new normal.

While working from home, one major thing strikes me. Despite the closure of schools, my children are still attending classes, albeit virtually. Their computers and mobile phones have been transformed into classrooms. “Dad, I noticed something very interesting today,” my daughter said. What was that? I asked inquisitively. “Our teacher had a better control of the class online,” she replied, and the conversation permeated into the advantages and disadvantages of online education.

I looked around the countries devastated by the impact of Covid-19. The story was the same in most countries with high or reasonable internet penetration. Back in 2011, Harvard University Professor Clayton M. Christensen and his co-author Henry Eyring, in their book “The Innovative University: Changing the DNA of Higher Education from the Inside Out”, made a clarion call to the ivory towers of learning to change and embrace online education. For them, traditional education was due for disruption. In fact, the introductory chapter of the book was titled “Ripe for Disruption—and Innovation”.

It wouldn’t be out of context to quote them: “a disruptive innovation […] disrupts the bigger-and-better cycle by bringing to market a product or service that is not as good as the best traditional offerings but is more affordable and easier to use. Online learning is an example.”  The two authors went on to warn institutions of higher learning that “if they cannot find innovative, less costly ways of performing their uniquely valuable functions, they are doomed to decline, high global and national rankings notwithstanding. Fortunately, such innovations are within their power.”

Many institutions have heeded the call and are providing classes online. With Covid-19 a major advantage has been unveiled. Online education will move from alternative to the mainstream. Competition will skyrocket. Cheaper means of acquiring education will ensue. But that is only one part of the story. A friend told me that he was glad that one positive thing that has come out from this pandemic was that educational institutions charging parents exorbitant fees would have to rethink. Our children could receive quality education from home.

Covid-19 has exposed a major weakness that development institutions must help tackle, and that is the digital divide in accessing quality education. While children in high- and middle-income economies could study from the comfort of their homes, those from poor countries could remain spectators in a world that should provide equal opportunity for all.
Lack of connectivity and access to the internet is leaving communities in a disadvantaged position even in developed countries. Brad Smith, the President of Microsoft, and Carol Ann Brownie, Microsoft’s senior director of communications and external relations, stated in their 2019 classic, “Tools and Weapons: The Promise and the Peril of the Digital Age”, that “rural areas that lack broadband are still living in the twentieth century. ” They found that “the highest unemployment rate in the country is located in the counties with the lowest availability of broadband, highlighting the strong link between broadband availability and economic growth.”

Certainly, there is global attention on returning 260 million children back to school worldwide. The answer is not in building mega physical infrastructure, rather, as Brad and Carol stated, we should concentrate on building what they called “Rural Broadband: The Electricity of the Twenty-First Century.”

Digital divide is the latest form of economic inequality. Development practitioners and policy makers should join hands to make the availability of the internet in developing countries a major development priority.

An earlier version of this piece was published in SDGs Digest

@JameelYushau
25/03/20
11:24pm

The Focus (119): Kano’s loss, Nigeria’s gain: Three points agenda for Muhammad Sanusi II


The dethronement of His Royal Highness Muhammadu Sanusi II is a huge loss for my home state of Kano, but what appears to be Kano’s loss, might become Nigeria’s gain. I have followed the ugly drama of his unfortunate dethronement from the throne he craved to ascend his entire adult life, yet, like the sudden end of a dream, it was whisked away from him in the most unfortunate of circumstances.

I have decided to engage in the debate about this historical saga for three reasons. First, Kano is my home state, and whatever happens in Kano is of interest to me personally. The second reason is the condition of Northern Nigeria. In the last decade, Northern Nigeria has become the hub of many social ills that should give every right thinking individual sleepless nights. An insurgency that has wrecked the population especially in the northeast of the country. An alarming level of poverty that has become the signpost of every street in the region. Social problems like high rate of divorce, and the mother of all problems in the region, child-begging or what is known as almajiranci, where millions of children run the street under the pretense of searching for Islamic education when in reality it is simply a sign of the failure of parenting.

Yet, the leadership of the region from independence to date has failed to find a solution to this problem, despite the region producing more leaders for the country, and the states most affected by the culture of street begging being run by the indigenes of the place, let alone blame others for our predicament. One person who has consistently  elevated the debate about these social ills in our society and utilized his authority, personal appeal, public engagements, international networks, and seizes every opportunity to draw sympathy to the situation of the child-beggar is His Royal Highness Muhammadu Sanusi II (a.k.a Sanusi Lamido Sanusi).

Not everybody agrees with his approach of defying traditional convention to be an advocate for social reform because of his position as a traditional authority. Others have questioned his attempt at making Ijtihad, a methodology in Islamic law that applies legal reasoning to find solution to contemporary challenges that do not have explicit explanation in the two main sources of legislation in Islam, that is the Qur’an and Sunnah (traditions of prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him), nor is there a consensus of opinion on them (ijma).

But Ijtihad is an issue that that has been thoroughly debated by scholars of Usul Al fiqh (the roots and foundation of investigating the methodologies to drive legal rulings from original sources), and a common position among the scholars of Usul is that a mistake  of Ijtihad in non-fundamental issues of religion should be excused, and are not considered sinful.  Disagreements and diversity of opinion was common throughout Islamic history and it has only enriched the discourse aimed at arriving at public good. Some of us have disagreed with His Royal Highness in the past, but such differences in understanding of issues should never be a justification for the suppression of truth as we have seen with the brutal nature Muhammadu Sanusi II was dethroned from the Amirship of Kano emirate. In my opinion, this is not an attempt at a personality, but a deliberate effort at dethroning public conscience.

The third reason is the need for a public face to continue representing public conscience at least in Northern Nigeria. The region cannot afford the silence of the learned. Enough damage has been done to the North by the shear aloofness of its elites. Here, I do not mean a political icon; we are already seeing the monumental failure of investing the entire effort of the region on personalities. Going by our political model, a politician can only serve in an executive office for maximum of eight years. The problems of Northern Nigeria will take a generation to solve.

In conclusion, I would like to suggest a three points agenda for His Royal Highness, Muhammad Sanusi II for the benefit of Northern Nigeria, and the larger Nigerian society. This simple manifesto could keep him busy for the rest of his life.

The first agenda is to aggressively engage in writing serious compendiums, which is what intellectuals do in every society that prospers.  As the social critic, poet, and religious philosopher Søren Kierkegaard stated, “life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.” Today, the Qur’an and any theological scripture that serves as a manual that enriches public ethics does so because our predecessors saw the need to ensure it is put it in print. A word in written form has an exceptional rhythm in capturing the imagination of generations unborn. Ideas, no matter how powerful would be forgotten if not documented in written form. Neither Adam Smith or Karl Marx would have influenced the 19th-20th century economic systems without putting their ideas in writing.

The second agenda is to establish a foundation that will focus on tackling the very issues that attracted the wrath of the mediocre politicians to remove him from the throne. The priority should be on educating the child-beggar (almajiri). Nigeria has one of the highest numbers of Out-of-School Children, majority of them in northern Nigeria. As one of the advocates appointed to promote the SDGs by the UN Secretary General, you have a major platform to attract resources to help achieve the targets of SDG4.  The second priority for this foundation is to focus on rebuilding the family system particularly in Northern Nigeria where divorce rates, and irresponsible men abandoning their responsibilities created some of the mess in the region. The third priority for the foundation is to work on youth empowerment, particularly equipping them with skills for entrepreneurship, innovation and SMEs. His personal library alone could be converted to public use, and serve as a starting point for the foundation, few people have access to such useful collection of literature.
The third agenda is to refine and strengthen your role as an advocate for social change. This can be done by working with like minds across the aisle, from Northern and Southern Nigeria. The youth are looking for role models, for inspiration, and for a sense of direction. There is scarcity of true role models in Nigeria, this is a vacuum that needs to be filled with immediate effect. I know some people are already blowing the siren of 2023 for you. That is your decision to make. But in or out of politics, the new chapter in your life is an opportunity to make a difference in the lives of ordinary Nigerians and beyond.

@JameelYushau
13/03/2020
11:10 pm