East African Business Week

ARUSHA, TANZANIA - Joseph Laitaika Okello (not real names) is a student planning to study a Masters Degree in Public Administration at one of the regional centres of the Open University of Tanzania (OUT) in Dar es Salaam.
Mr. Okello is a resident of Arusha city in Northern Tanzania and he would be required to travel 647km for the period during which he is supposed to attend classes for the six modules of his course.
If he was to study at the regional centre in Dodoma, he would travel 438km, 826kms through Lake Victoria to Mwanza and 1085km to Mbeya among others.
These are the distances to the over 20 regional centres that have been established by the Open University of Tanzania aimed at bringing education services nearer to the people and in addition to lowering the costs of education in Tanzania and the East Africa region at large.
However, the Open University of Tanzania (OUT) is planning to further lower the costs of education through the introduction of e-learning to all its regional centres in Tanzania including those that have been established in other countries of Kenya, Rwanda, Burundi and Uganda.
The purpose of introducing the new technology in the teaching methods of the university is to attract more students, lower the costs of education and making it easy for them to take on their subjects at the regional centres instead of traveling such long distances or suffering from rent costs.
According to the OUT Vice Chancellor Prof. Tolly Mbwette,  the university is already conducting a distance learning programme and is in the process of introducing modern methods of learning starting with e-learning and by the end of the next academic year, all the university centres that are located in urban areas will be connected to the network," he said at the launching of the Master of Law in International Criminal Justice degree course at African Tulip hotel in Arusha, Tanzania last week.
"However introduction of e-learning will not result into throwing away use of books because we have regional centres where the infrastructure is not yet established and they will continue using books," he explained.
He said that e-learning is critical in the modern world since it has become an ideal delivery vehicle for education and learning and offers both teachers and learners access to anywhere, any time information rich resources.
"Even the conducting of the new degree course we are launching will be flexible with a student doing all the six modules at own time till completion after which she or he can take on the dissertation work," he noted.
Already six students from Kenya, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe have registered for the course that begins next academic year.
"We are expanding education programmes in Rwanda where we have already signed a memorandum of understanding with science and Technology University and soon we shall be signing another with the Uganda Martyr's University in Uganda and are identifying a corresponding University in Burundi," he said.
Prof. Mbwette asked the Tanzanian government to authorize the university to host the archives of the International Criminal Tribunal of Rwanda (ICTR) and take over ownership of the building housing the university centre in Arusha.
"Since we have lunched this programme, the government should allow us to run the ICTR library and allocate the building where our offices are located to the university, this is a government university renting a government building," he said.
He said the request was first made in 2008 by the university through the ministries of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation and Justice and Constitutional Affairs.
The proposal to have the archives hosted by OUT was made by the university in collaboration with the East African Law Society, the premier bar association which operates from here.
He added that OUT and EALS are convinced that Arusha was an ideal location for the archives since it was the headquarters of the East African Community (EAC) and the ICTR handling case of the Rwanda genocide.
Prof Craig Baker of the University of Sussex in the UK said the East African region lacks professional lawyers to handle cases of International Criminal Justice.
Prof Baker, who is a leading international criminal lawyer, said the programme which would be hosted by the Open University of Tanzania (OUT) would be of great significance to the region.
According to the OUT vice chancellor, Prof Tolly Mbwette, the programme would accomodate students from the five East African Community partner states.
He added that the programme would be run by OUT in collaboration with the International Criminal Law Centre (ICLC) and is mainly aimed at creating a critical mass of experts in International Criminal Law.