In order to further promote education levels in Africa and global education equality, UNESCO and NetDragon recently formed a strategic partnership and held an online meeting. The two parties will take the signing of the strategic cooperation memorandum as an opportunity to achieve the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development as set out by the United Nations. Leveraging their respective advantages, the two sides will provide African countries with high-quality and efficient education, and contribute to the advancement of global education equity and global education cooperation.
△Starting from the top: Director of Division for Cooperation, Intersectoral Follow-Up and Partnership of Africa Department of UNESCO Du Yue, Co-President of Tsinghua University China-Africa Leadership Development Institute Getachew Engida, NetDragon CEO Xiong Li, Assistant Director-General of UNESCO Firmin Edouard Matoko
During the meeting, Firmin Edouard Matoko, Assistant Director-General of UNESCO, first congratulated NetDragon and UNESCO for reaching a strategic partnership and introduced UNESCO’s 10-year strategic plan for Africa. Matoko said that he looked forward to the joint efforts to be launched by the two parties, and hoped that in the future NetDragon could make efforts in distance education and education technology, and leverage UNESCO’s expert resources in education, culture and exchanges to carry out various types of in-depth cooperation across the globe. Meanwhile, Du Yue, Director of Division for Cooperation, Intersectoral Follow-Up and Partnership of Africa Department of UNESCO, said he anticipated NetDragon to carry out more cooperation in Africa as well as other regions of the world.
△Assistant Director-General of UNESCO Firmin Edouard Matoko participates in the meeting
Dr. Xiong Li, deputy director of the National Engineering Laboratory for Internet Education Intelligent Technology and Application and CEO of NetDragon, said that NetDragon has been committed to improving the education levels in Africa. The Company has participated in the compilation of UNESCO’s “Guidance on Open Educational Practices during COVID-19 pandemic” and demonstrated how to utilize Open Educational Resources (OER) to increase teaching efficiency through practical cases of different countries. NetDragon also launched the “African Teachers Online Education Capacity Building Program” in June of this year, in which the Company will open access to its Edmodo online learning platform in Africa, provide trainings to 100,000 teachers on online teaching, and produce 1,000 relevant training courses with its partners. The compilation of OER and the launch of the “African Teachers Online Education Capacity Building Program” have given rise to the strategic partnership between NetDragon and UNESCO. Dr. Xiong said that NetDragon, as a technology-focused Internet company, has established long-term and close education cooperation with Egypt, Nigeria and other African countries in the past few years. He hopes that with Africa as a starting point, NetDragon could make use of UNESCO’s educational resources and exchange opportunities around the world to explore more cooperation opportunities globally and thus promote global education equality.
△NetDragon CEO Dr. Xiong Li attends the meeting
Based on the strategic cooperation memorandum, NetDragon and UNESCO will jointly carry out a number of education informatization initiatives in Africa, including realizing the United Nations 2030 Sustainable Development Goals, promoting inclusive and fair quality education, benefiting the African region and the world with AI technology, providing open educational resources with cutting-edge educational technology, jointly establishing a digital education platform for the public, developing high-quality learning resources and training courses to support different education models in Africa, developing digital tools and education solutions, etc.
NetDragon held high-level talks with UNESCO again after launching the “African Teachers Online Education Capacity Building Program” in June this year. Since 2018, NetDragon has gradually established cooperative relations with countries in the African region and utilized its education technology to deliver diversified educational solutions to Africa, such as donating smart classrooms to Nigeria and providing access to its Edmodo online learning platform in Egypt. The establishment of the strategic partnership with UNESCO this time demonstrates that NetDragon has won authoritative recognition and support at the international level in helping African countries achieve educational innovation and upgrades. Dr. Xiong said that promoting the development of digital education and allowing children from all over the world to benefit from education technology will be the direction that NetDragon always adheres to in the future.
