ABSTRACT
Distance education (DE) has a tremendous potential to meet Africa’s educational needs as the demand for all levels and forms of education grows rapidly. Many African countries and institutions have deployed DE to meet the growing need for higher education and, to a lesser extent, secondary and non-formal education. DE is seen as a cost-effective and efficient means of increasing access to education and enabling Africans to improve their qualifications without the high costs of building facilities and learners leaving their communities, jobs or other commitments. But several major challenges are becoming apparent. There is a perception that DE cannot offer the same quality of education as conventional face-to-face education. Many African educational policymakers and planners are sceptical about its legitimacy and standards, and therefore afford only limited political support and/or funding to DE undertakings. Most African countries lack policies to guide the development and implementation of DE programmes at national and institutional levels. There is inadequate information and communications technology (ICT) infrastructure and a shortage of the qualified staff required for influencing and implementing DE policies and practices. There are dangers of increasing enrolments with little regard for the quality of the learning experience or whether the programmes are relevant to the human resource development needs and the adoption of DE by educational institutions driven primarily by a desire for financial gain (Pityana, 2008). Other challenges facing higher education in Africa include gender and regional disparities, a mismatch between the skills acquired by university graduates and those demanded by industry, imbalances in terms of the number of students studying sciences and humanities, rigid admission criteria, lack of modalities for credit transfer between universities and other post-secondary institutions, lack of recognition of prior learning, the brain drain and the threat posed by HIV and AIDS (Hoosen, Butcher, & Njenga, 2009).
