However, the same cannot be said of the country’s rural area, which still battle to access basic services such as clean water and sanitation.
With the advent of the 4th Industrial Revolution and its attendant demands for a new approach to education and training, it behoves all citizens and institutions to do their part to ensure that no one, and certainly no child is left behind.
As the TMF, in partnership with ProFuturo, we are proud to report on the success of the pilot of our digital education project which we recently launched in Mpumalanga, April 21 – 22, and the Eastern Cape on April 29 – 30. Working together with the Department of Basic Education in the respective provinces, we recently handed over digital equipment to rural and township 25 schools which are already fitted with the basic education curriculum.
Part of the project preparation has also entailed the training of teachers and employment of fulltime couches to maximise the benefit of access to such digital equipment.
The initiative is a product of a report commissioned by the TMF in 2019 on “Education in the Age of the 21st Century: Responding to the challenges and opportunities of the 4th Industrial Revolution” and is generously sponsored by the Spanish based Telefonica and ‘La Caixa Foundations with the aim of leveraging technology to close education gaps in South Africa and the rest of the African continent.
Attached to the TMF-ProFuturo Initiative, the TMF also launched a small-scale farming project called Kilimo Support Programme. Managed in collaboration with communities in which the pilot schools are located, this project aims to foster self-reliance in the attempt to tackle poverty through small scale farming.
This collaboration has set itself an ambitious target to reach a million learners within the current decade.