Global Education Initiative

http://www.weforum.org/en/initiatives/gei/index.htm

In its six years of existence, the Global Education Initiative has impacted over 1.8 million students and teachers and mobilized over US$ 100 million in resource support in Jordan, Rajasthan (India), Egypt, the Palestinian Territories and Rwanda. Today, the GEI engages over 40 private sector partners, 14 governments, seven international organizations and 20 NGOs with a Steering Board of nine Industry and Strategic Partners (AMD, Cisco, Edelman, HP, Intel, Microsoft, Satyam, StratReal, and SK Group).

When this initiative was launched in Egypt back in 2006, I’ve attended part of the ceremony, my analysis is mainly reflected from the Egyptian track.

Face 1: Market Focus

Egypt Education Initiative (EEI) has 4 tracks; K12, Higher Education, Life Long Learning and Corporate.

 Face 2: Type of Offerings

As the objective is to encourage Public/Private Partnership (PPP model), each commercial vendor supplied and sponsored either an Infrastructure, Content or Service.

 Face 3: Who is the buyer?

The hosting agency is the World Economic Forum, so such initiatives are normally discussed at the presidential level first during the famous Davos WEF summits. In Egypt, EEI is endorsed by the first lady of Egypt (Mrs. Suzan Mubarak) and the beneficiary stakeholders are; Ministry of ICT, MoE and MoHE

Face 4: Global Markets

Clearly such initiative targets developing countries. So far; Jordan, Egypt, Palestine, Rajasthan.  What seems interesting, that WEF is asking piloted countries to extend support to new countries joining the program. This is what’s expected from Egypt to offer for Rwanda.

Face 5: Development of the Market

EEI model is to export best practice facilitated by international private companies (like the Intel Teach program which has been Cubed in this blog) , also capacity building is highly pushed forward to achieve the sustainability strategic objective of this initiative.

Face 6: Learning Technology Competing with Other Forms of Learning

As pointed above, technologies are being introduced as the big picture of integrating ICT in Education as one of the means for Education Reform.  Natural resistance is expected and alternatives are offered by starting with pilot model schools (ready for technology environment) in selected urban geography.