TETFund, ICDL sign Memorandum of Understanding
The Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund) has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the International Computer Driving License (ICDL) on the provision of digital literacy to staff of the Fund’s beneficiary institutions across the country.
The signing of the document took place recently in Rwanda, during the 2021 ICDL Africa Forum held in the capital city, Kigali.
It would be recalled that the Fund had created the ICT Support Intervention designed to deepen the application of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in Beneficiary Institutions and ICDL Certification has been employed as a certification standard.
Speaking at the event, the Chief Executive Officer of ICDL Foundation, Damien O’Sullivan commended TETFund for taking the initiative to provide digital literacy to workers in its beneficiary institutions through the ICDL platform.
He expressed satisfaction that the relationship between the Fund and ICDL has over the past two years deepened and a lot achieved, despite the global lockdown that occurred in 2020 as a result of the Covid 19 pandemic.
The ICDL CEO also commended the Executive Secretary of TETFund, Prof. Suleiman Elias Bogoro for his commitment to empowering workers in the various institutions with digital literacy which ultimately would lead to more effective job performance.
“At personal level, I felt that we established a connection straight away. I found in the Executive Secretary, somebody who is on the same wavelength as the ICDL.
“As we have talked about many times; at ICDL, it is a people business. It might be about technology or skills, but it’s about people and empowering people through technology.
“What we have seen over the last two years despite everything that happened; we have seen this relationship deepen and blossom. A lot has been achieved through this project with the 17,000 people we have engaged with the programme,” he said.
Speaking earlier as a panelist at the ICDL Forum, Prof. Suleiman Elias Bogoro explained that as an intervention agency, TETFund had the mandate to look at areas of priorities that would make Nigerian universities, polytechnics and colleges of education more competitive and deficient digital literacy was one area identified as a challenge among the beneficiary institutions.
According to the Executive Secretary, “In the 21st Century, no nation will be competitive if you have no digital literacy; it is a global imperative and we couldn’t afford to be different.”
“We have been able to train 17,000 of academic and non-academic staff in digital literacy and that is only for a segment of Nigeria, which is really commendable.
“What we intend to do going back is to popularize this intervention by ICDL beyond the education sector, beyond the tertiary education subsector in particular,” he said.
One of the high points of the Forum was the presentation of award of excellence in education delivery to TETFund by ICDL.
