Is a landlocked located in Southern Africa, between the Zambezi and Limpopo rivers bordered by South Africa to the south, Botswana to the south-west, Zambia to the north and Mozambique to the east.
Published in Chapter:
COVID-19 and the Digital Transformation of Education Lessons Learnt on 4IR in Zimbabwe
Tawanda Chinengundu (University of Pretoria, South Africa), John Chakamba (University of Zimbabwe, Zimbabwe), and Jerald Hondonga (New Era College, Botswana)
Copyright: © 2022
|Pages: 16
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-7998-8275-6.ch025
Abstract
This study assessed the influence of the COVID-19 pandemic in motivating digital transformation in the education sector in Zimbabwe. The study tracked the rate at which the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) tools were used by various institutions during the COVID-19 lockdown. Data were obtained from secondary sources. The findings are that, in Zimbabwe, during the lockdown, a variety of 4IR tools were unleashed from primary education to higher and tertiary education where educational activities switched to remote (online) learning. These observations reflect that Zimbabwe generally has some elements of excellence to drive the education sector into the 4IR, which has the potential to increase access. Access to education, particularly at a higher education level, has always been a challenge due to a limited number of spaces available. The pandemic has presented an opportunity to assess successes and failures of deployed technologies, costs associated with them, and scaling these technologies to improve access.