The recent release of the World Bank's new flagship publication on ICT for development (ICT4D) contains much food for thought for educational policymakers. IC4D 2009: Extending Reach and Increasing Impact takes an in-depth look at how ICT, and particularly broadband and mobile, are impacting economic growth in developing countries.
How can education systems help develop the type of workers increasingly needed for jobs that increasingly require familiarity (and in some cases mastery) of ICTs -- a challenge complicated by the fact that many of these jobs may not yet even exist?
This new report offers a compelling case that the IT and ITES sectors offer opportunities to drive economic growth in many developing countries -- but governments need to act (and/or get out of the way, depending on the current context) if the opportunities for such growth are to be realized.
Consider that:
- The global market for IT and IT-enabled services (ITES) represented $475 billion in 2007, with less than 15 percent of the market being exploited
- Jobs in IT/ITES sector will account for 27% of all new jobs in the Philippines by 2010
The education sector will have a key role to play in this regard in many cases, by promoting not only basic types of digital or ICT literacy, but, more fundamentally, the sets of 21st century skills increasingly considered to be critical drivers for success in the modern workplace, whether you are in Munich or Manila.
As new stresses and challenges are placed on education systems around the world, new tools and opportunites are emerging that potentially offer new ways of tackling old problems. The report notes, for example, that mobile networks, with over 4 billion connections, [currently] constitute the world's largest distribution platform. How might such connections be utilized to help provide increased access to educational opportunities in ways not previously possible?
The World Bank will be hosting a series of on-line discussions around these and related issues in the coming days.
All next week, you can interact with the authors on World Bank Publications' Facebook page
In addition, principal author Christine Zhen-Wei Qiang will be online Tuesday, July 28 at 11 a.m. EDT to answer questions as part of the World Bank's SpeakOut series.
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