ACCRA, Ghana, June 4 (NewsDay Live) — Zimbabwe on Wednesday proposed a five-point continental action plan aimed at reducing Africa’s dependence on foreign digital learning platforms and building sovereign education technology infrastructure across the continent.
Addressing the 18th eLearning Africa Ministerial Round Table in Accra, Minister of Higher and Tertiary Education, Innovation, Science and Technology Development Ambassador Frederick Shava urged African governments to take collective ownership of digital education systems, data infrastructure and artificial intelligence development.
The invitation-only ministerial forum is being held alongside the annual eLearning Africa conference under the theme, “Championing Sovereign, Innovative and United Learning Systems: Empowering Africa on Its Own Terms.” More than 1,000 delegates from over 80 countries are attending the June 3-5 gathering at Labadi Beach Hotel.
Shava presented Zimbabwe’s approach as a model for the continent, citing investments in a high-performance computing facility, a national data center and a cyber-infrastructure network linking educational institutions. He said Zimbabwe is also developing AI tools in indigenous languages hosted locally on GPU clusters rather than foreign cloud platforms.
“Our development of artificial intelligence-powered e-learning platforms, models and content is executed on our own containerized cloud infrastructure,” Shava said, describing the strategy as “digital industrialization in action” and the country’s educational intellectual output as “sovereign national assets.”
Shava outlined five proposals aimed at accelerating Africa’s digital education sovereignty. He called for a continental cyber-infrastructure sharing protocol modeled on the Southern African Development Community framework, which already allows researchers in Zimbabwe and South Africa to access each other’s high-performance computing facilities.
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He also urged coordinated investment in data centers and reliable power infrastructure to underpin artificial intelligence and digital learning systems.
The minister further proposed the creation of a pan-African open educational resources framework with common standards and cross-border recognition of digital qualifications, arguing that credentials earned in one African country should be accepted across the continent.
He also advocated for an African regulatory sandbox to co-finance locally developed virtual laboratories and AI platforms while ensuring intellectual property remains in Africa.
Shava called for a continental AI readiness compact committing member states to deploy locally hosted AI tools in education and share training datasets while safeguarding national curriculum priorities.
The proposals come amid growing concern among African policymakers over the continent’s reliance on technology platforms developed and controlled outside Africa.
In unusually candid remarks, Shava acknowledged being unsettled by concerns raised during earlier discussions.
“I’m really scared by what the speaker before me said about the dominance of other systems outside Africa over our system,” he told delegates.
The 2026 ministerial round table has brought together ministers responsible for education, ICT, labor, youth and finance to discuss strategies for strengthening Africa’s digital learning ecosystem and workforce preparedness.
The conference is organized in partnership with the African Union Development Agency (AUDA-NEPAD), the African Union and the UNESCO. Ghana’s vice president officially opened the event, underscoring the growing importance of digital education and skills development across the continent.