The EC e-Skills Hub is placed within Walter Sisulu University, Buffalo City Metropole. The Walter Sisulu University has an unusually expansive reach, including the entire eastern part of the Eastern Cape, from East London to Port Edward. The four campuses cover a radius of nearly 300 kms. The uniqueness of this reach is actually hidden in the unusually high density of rural schools in the eastern part of the Eastern Cape, virtually all of which relate to this one higher education institution. Walter Sisulu University relates to FET colleges, high schools and the rural community, while FET colleges and high schools in turn relate to primary schools and the rural community in a community-based multi-stakeholder network. Walter Sisulu University also relates to the industrial and business community including large and small firms and the cities in which they are based, including Buffalo City, Queenstown, Butterworth and Mthatha.
To enable rural communities to acquire e-skills that can contribute to the development of human and social capital and that can transform their socio-economic environment.
The EC eSkills Hub will be focused on e-skilling for rural development, whilst acknowledging that its role is that of providing an independent provincial platform for all key stakeholder groups from all sectors across the province, to participate effectively in e-skilling all needy members of civil society and in promoting current and future opportunities to develop the economy. The focus on rural development aligns with WSU’s declared mandate of “providing access to knowledge to a diversity of learners and actors from mainly rural, poor and disadvantaged communities”.
The first main target group will be educators and it would be realistic to implement the projects in a series of phases, (starting with educators) each of which widens out to include more members of the community using the educators as trainers and the learners as tutors. Thus, the Hub facilitates the training of the educators who in turn teach their learners and a cohort of learners can then help as tutors when the educators train members of the local community using the knowledge/information hubs within the community. The first group of educators that the EC Hub has identified is FET College ICT Lecturers who will engage with the EC Hub in a collaborative partnership to improve their technical and didactic skills.
