New Media Technologies and Childhood Education for Development Purposes in Africa

Abstract

Education is the ‘right' of every child and should not be a privilege. As signatories to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of a Child (CRC), every country in Africa has a fundamental responsibility in the global commitment towards the provision of childhood education in their respective states. However, the number of children in the continent that are ‘out of school' has risen to the world's highest today. This chapter examines some of the problems encumbering childhood education in Africa, especially in terms of curriculum development, funding, and capacity building and interrogates the effectiveness of current mitigation strategies. It argues that childhood education holds the key to unlocking the potentials of the vast natural and human resources of the continent that are required to catalyze poverty reduction and socio-economic development in the years ahead.