KIGALI - The Minister of Education Dr Daphrose Gahakwa has said that Rwanda needs to expand and improve the quality of education systems through ICT.

Gahakwa said this at the opening of international ICT in Education workshop in Kigali yesterday that brought together some of the world’s leading ICT firms and educationists.

"In order to achieve this, we need infrastructure, we need capacity to build, maintain and creatively use that infrastructure, and we need to expand and improve the quality of our education system by means of ICTs,” she remarked.

The aim of the workshop which was facilitated by MINEDUC and Global Learning Portal (GLP) focused on forging partnerships between Rwanda education stakeholders, donors, and the private sector to improve ICT usage in the education system.

According to Gahakwa, using technologies in education has great potential.

"They can enable teachers to have access to new types of teaching materials…they can provide education and training without limits,” she said reiterating government’s firm stand of taking full advantage of these possibilities.

Minister Gahakwa however added that technology alone cannot be sufficient to take Rwanda into the future it envisions.

"We must have an educated, engaged, and durably reconciled citizenry,” she said.

One of the guest speakers, Minister of Information, Louise Mushikiwabo, made a commitment to partner with MINEDUC to use radio and National TV to broadcast educational programmes. She called upon partners to provide types of contents that can be broadcast through different media outlets.

Speaking at the workshop, the Minister in the President’s Office in charge of Science and Technology Prof. Romains Murenzi said that there was need to give the young people access to content.

"There is need to give the young people access to content. They cannot get the content when they don’t know how to use the computers, and they cannot learn how to use them when they don’t have access to them,” he said.

The workshop was attended by some of the world’s leading Information and Communication Technology firms that included; Microsoft, Intel, Sun Microsystems, Motorola, One Laptop Per Child, and Cisco among others.

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