Covid-19 will forever change many sectors, including developing many new ones. For the online education industry, it contributed to the growth significantly. In Africa for instance, many institutions which conventionally do not offer online programmes started delivering their programmes online after several months of lockdown.
The Africa e-learning market attained a value of around USD 905 million in 2020. The industry is expected to grow at a CAGR of 14.5% between 2021 and 2026 according to Expert Market Research. The reality of this is a reflection of approximately 20% user growth which was recorded on DoviLearn, an African key player in the e-learning industry.
During the Pandemic
While many corporate workers were bored at home during the lockdown, they opted for other activities to keep themselves busy. For some, acquiring new skills through online education was one of the options available for them.
E-learning adoption in African has been low, as the traditional classroom education continues to take the lead for most forms of education, including for degree and skill-based programmes. This, in my view, can be easily attributed to the lack of adoption at the higher education level. Most African countries are still not offering online degree programmes or distance learning alternatives, which as a result has affected the habit of online education adoption across all levels. If more universities in Africa offered online degree programmes, these students will come out with the habit of online study and pursue more online professional courses for their advancements.
COVID-19 pandemic made it more necessary than ever for institutions to begin to adopt many other forms of learning. The use of audio-visual conferencing communication tools like Zoom, GoToMeeting, Google Hangouts were immediately adopted by lecturers to deliver informal classes. Students received lectures via WhatsApp groups, Facebook groups, Webinars, including other social media communication tools. It is still uncertain if the high education regulatory bodies will hasten the pace to set the regulatory guidelines for online degree programmes, albeit the long-overdue need for it.
Businesses as well were not left out in the adoption of online technology. Some companies were able to find success during the pandemic using technology and stayed afloat in their business, but these were mostly businesses offering digital products or e-commerce for essential commodities. All thanks to their ability to pivot to online business models.
Businesses which were already in the field delivering online education or conferencing solutions were at the peak of beneficiaries within the pandemic. Zoom recorded about 300% growth during this period.
For us at DoviLearn, our journey has been steady and promising, with more awareness of online courses and online education gradually increasing over the years. Before the pandemic, from the data of users we have gathered over 4 years of running DoviLearn, early adopters to e-learning were mainly from the formal sector; corporate organisations, professionals, startups, and ”tech-entrepreneurs”. The pandemic, however, triggered a new wave of interest groups in the online learning space.
We noticed a trend of other uncommon sectors and audience categories who were beginning to search for skill-based courses online to improve their skills, in preparation for their future job prospection. On DoviLearn, undergraduate students took online courses like Project Management, Event Management, Entrepreneurship Study, Digital Marketing, Leadership Study, Accounting and Finance, including other tons of online courses which initially were common with the professional working-class market segment.
Post Pandemic: Corporate Sector and Government Intervention
While the surge we experienced within April 2020 – August 2020 gradually declined when public activities started to reopen gradually, our prediction, however, based on internal analysis suggest that there will be a permanent 5% – 10% market growth on the adoption of e-learning in Africa. This figure is expected to be high when more corporates businesses will also key into the use of online learning as a way to train their workforce.
The growth trend experienced during the pandemic suggests that tight work schedule could have been one of the reasons why many corporate workers have not adopted e-learning, and also poor habitual behaviour for online education. However, if more businesses provide an easy path to access corporate online training for their workforce, online learning adoption for professional training will likely increase between 15% – 20% in 3 years.
Government intervention through policy making and other interventions for online higher education will build a strong momentum in the awareness creation, and the overall adoption of online education. Interventions through accreditation provisions for higher institutions, provision of Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) technology for virtual tutoring, provision of skill-based training on online education technology for lecturers and teachers, process and programme quality review and guidance, among others will go a long way in integrating online education into the education mainstream in Nigeria.
Full e-learning adoption in Nigeria at the higher education level will go a long way to ensure that education at the tertiary level becomes available and accessible to everyone. This will also increase the adoption of online learning for professional skills in the long run through habitual online learning adoption, since graduates who are familiar with online form of education will most likely patronise other forms of online learning for their professional development and skill enhancement.
Vincent Chidozie Okeke is an e-learning technology specialist, online higher education consultant, market researcher, and founder of DoviLearn