21st Century Prediction & the Place of Collaboration for African Teachers' Survival

One of the factors that would define this century (21^st century) and the ones ahead of us would be collaboration and networking in form of mutual support.

How and why?

As the global macroeconomic potentials keep declining, the only and major way for economic survival would be entrepreneurship- a lot of people will go into private businesses. In fact, public jobs would be minimal, that even teachers would be forced to source for second income opportunities.

With this, internet business and ‘work from home’ jobs would thrive. Then comes another problem!

What? High level competition to attract and sustain a customer-base. It would come to a point where thousands of people would be offering same quality of service and product to a market. Who then wins the fight?

Fierce competition won’t suffice for any party. The only option would be collaboration, where each and every of the competing parties would rather patronize one another than competing against one another.

For instance, bloggers would be forced to network in mutual agreement to visit and comment on one another’s blog posts and all that, as there would be so much resources online (quality ones, of course), that depending on driving organic traffic from the traditional sources alone would be so difficult.

Now in what ways can collaboration favour teachers in the 21^st century? Nay! African teachers of the 21^st century!

In many ways than one…

This is no time to depend on the government of the day; more so with the self-centered African political leaders. Promoting education in Africa is now the prerogative of African teachers and the lovers of the beautiful brains of Africa.

However, depending on the limited resources and exposure we have in those remote African villages where we work would be quite ridiculous. We have to take advantage of the provisions of the technological advancement in our world to actualize our dream of resuscitating the dwindling fortunes of African education.

How will collaboration profit African teachers?

#1. Shared Resources

In this age of information technology, it is very possible to share resources and educational tools with our colleagues from other countries in Africa where there is paucity of such relevant resources.

After reading reports on educational challenges from many of our friends from other countries in Africa, I admit that those of us here in Nigeria are even more privileged than very many others, though we have our own challenges too. In this case, coming together can help us narrow such gap by extending resource help to others.

#2. Regional Networking

African teachers can operate as a network for mutual benefit. It will be very nice having an instituted body that caters for the career-enhancement and welfare goal of African teachers, aside the moribund national teachers unions we have in our various countries that are under the strangles of corrupt government officials.

The best way to do it is to start from the grassroot.

It’s time teachers woke up from their slumber and reclaim their trampled destiny.

#3. Teachers’ Training Programs

My experience in the last ‘Technology for Teachers’ conference held in Lagos, Nigeria in the first weekend of April, opened my eyes to the necessity of organizing training programs for teachers.

What we were taught in school is never enough, especially now that there is a paradigm shift from the conventional to the more technologically-driven system in education globally.

African teachers need such informative trainings in order to be kept abreast of the necessary changes in the global educational consciousness as well as stand a chance of beating the competitiveness of today’s educational challenges.

#4. Career-enhancing Ideas

Coming together can help us get access to a lot of career-enhancing ideas that could have been impossible without the collaboration.

The last time I read an article from a Kenyan teacher, I learnt a lot- some success tips that I am already applying to succeed in my teaching career.

The Nigerian teacher has a lot to benefit from the Botswana teacher; same is a Ghanaian teacher from his South African counterpart, and the list goes on.  African teachers, let’s collaborate for mutual benefit.

#5. Financial Empowerment

Many African teachers are living like beggars. This trend does not help promote the image of education in Africa. No wonder, our young ones wouldn’t dream of going into teaching.

But it is very possible to correct this anomaly when we come together. African teachers should be encouraged in small groups to run a co-operative. This will enable them pull resources together to achieve a greater good for the financial benefit of all.

#6. Foreign and Domestic Grants/Support

By the time we have such collaboration; it will be easy to access educational grants and teachers’ welfare support from both local and international donor organizations.

#7. Cross Border Technological Awareness

A lot of teachers in the remote villages of many African countries are ignorant to the wave of technological advancement in the global educational frontiers.

Let me make it clearer for you. If you come to Nigeria, teachers in Lagos State are well ahead of teachers from every other part of the country. And the problem there is that unless one moves from that other part of the country where nothing is virtually happening, to Lagos where things are happening, there is a tendency of one becoming the proverbial ‘one-eyed man who is king in the land of the blind’, a local champion at best.

It is only our coming together that will open our eyes to existing opportunities that are yet far from our grip. As a result, we are challenged and made to seek for an improvement from our status quo.

There is no other better time to network than now. This is just the 21^st century trend- collaborate or collapse.

We lose nothing collaborating, but we gain more doing just that.

If African politicians have failed our continent, let not African teachers fail us.

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