Burkina Faso, like most countries, is constantly looking for innovative solutions to provide quality education to its entire population. To achieve this, the country has turned to ICTs because of the immense potential they offer.
Burkina Faso inaugurated, Tuesday (September 20), the data center of the virtual university of Burkina Faso. The data center (based in Ouagadougou) was inaugurated by ICT Minister Aminata Zerbo/Sabané (photo, left), and the Minister of Higher Education Frédéric Ouattara (photo, right).
It is a multi-task and multi-action infrastructure exclusively dedicated to education as its name (datacenter de l’éducation- datacenter for education) implies. According to Minister Aminata Zerbo/Sabané, it will help host digital resources and enable easier access to them. It will also allow the interconnection of the country's universities, and facilitate access to live classes.
"This is an important step in the integration of digital tools in higher education to improve the quality of the training offered and address the challenges faced by our universities, including overcrowding,” she said.
The data center is hosted by the National Agency for the Promotion of Information Technology and Communication (ANPTIC). It has great energy adaptation abilities and a broadband connection to facilitate access to educational resources that will be hosted.
For Minister Frédéric Ouattara, it will be useful in more ways than one, because "it will not only enable distance learning, e-classes and allow the streaming of remote or in-person classes. It will also allow demos and help deploy internet in the whole [higher education] system."
The school closure prompted by the coronavirus pandemic and the ongoing security crisis compelled Burkina Faso to place digitalization at the core of its education projects. In July 2022, 69 of its private and public university lecturers were trained in digital course scripting, design, and assessment.
The data center built with the technical support of Huawei is the first step of the innovative smart classroom project that the virtual university of Burkina Faso aims to launch soon.
Samira Njoya
