I have chaired quite a number of conference sessions in my career. Most of them follow the same format; slides, presentations, polite questions and applause. I find that format boring and I told the speakers of this conference as much when I reached out before the event. I wanted something that felt like a real conversation, not a series of performances.
What happened in the eLearning Africa room on June 4 in Accra exceeded anything I had planned for.
The session was INC17 — Gender Responsive Digital Pathways in STEM, TVET and Research. On paper it sounds like standard conference fare. In practice it was one of the most intersectional, honest and energising conversations I have had at a conference in a while.
Priscilla Kerebi from Edsource Africa in Kenya opened with work that stopped the room. She leads InnovateHer Kenya and the data and stories she brought about what girls are actually facing when they try to access digital pathways in STEM were grounded, specific and impossible to dismiss. As Chair of the Board for InnovateHer in the UK, I left that session knowing that a partnership between InnovateHer UK and InnovateHer Kenya is not just possible. It is necessary. We will be exploring that in the coming weeks.
And then there was Irene.
And then there was Irene.
Irene Mkini Lugalla from the MS Training Centre for Development Cooperation in Tanzania presented on decolonising academic spaces through digital learning. I am not being dramatic when I say it set my hair on fire. She came with an analysis that was sharp, intersectional and deeply rooted in the lived realities of the people she works with. She did not just describe the problem. She named the systems producing it and pointed to what change actually looks like from inside a Tanzanian institution.
This is what eLearning Africa does best. It puts people in a room who are doing the hard, necessary work and creates the conditions for honest conversations about decolonization, gender equity, and what digital inclusion actually looks like when it is designed by and for the communities it is meant to serve.
This is what eLearning Africa does best. It puts people in a room who are doing the hard, necessary work and creates the conditions for honest conversations about decolonization, gender equity, and what digital inclusion actually looks like when it is designed by and for the communities it is meant to serve.
Thank you to eLearning Africa, Rebecca Stromeyer and Rosa Calero for asking me to chair. I’m honoured.
