**7. Current realities and repositioning of Africa's HEIs in ICT era**

In the context of advancing information technology and knowledge production, a lot has changed in the way we do business. Increasingly people are looking for innovative ways of providing better, cheaper, and affordable services and will continue to do so. It is important for Africa as a continent to appreciate the current realities of the impact of globalization (**Table 1**).

Basing on these realities, clearly the world is moving towards the adoption of online driven virtual business. Thus, there is no way Africa as a continent could afford to lag behind the rest of the world by its failure to build capacity in online tools and opportunities to advance innovation and knowledge creation. Therefore,


#### **Table 1.**

*Current realities for the need to reposition Africa's HEIs in ICT era.*

HEIs must play a central role to enhance this urgently needed capacity building by equipping students with the ability to maneuver/utilize emerging online tools for creating innovative business opportunities. By doing so, HEIs can transform Africa's economies to the extent of surviving both anticipated and unanticipated dynamic globalization challenges and opportunities. However, this cannot be realized if African HEIs continue to deliver the same education and training programs

#### *Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) in Africa Embracing the "New Normal" for Knowledge… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.101063*

introduced during the colonial days. Thus, curricula innovation is inevitably needed to prepare a new e-generation of individuals who are endowed with the required ICT literacy skills. This will demand for a paradigm shift in the curricula innovation enterprise in a sense that all these current realities should be integrated into the curricula design.

At least something must be done about the curricula enterprise for HE in Africa especially in terms of ensuring the enhancing human capacity in online and ICT skills. This will require a holistic curricula transformation in HEIs to be able to produce a new e-generation of individuals that are capable of contributing to the needed knowledge production through the use of emerging innovative technologies and cloud computing solutions. It will also be vital to ensure that each student, whoever graduates from any HEIs in Africa should have been oriented in online mobile technologies and applications. This could expand online ICT literacy in all HEIs in Africa. Furthermore, all computer engineering programs should also emphasize cloud computing skills and information security management skills. As such a generation of individuals who are confident, comfortable and enjoy working with these tools will increase. However, this requires students' engagement into activities that promote interactive learning in production and application of knowledge [4].

Increasingly there will be need for shifting the focus from curricula content coverage to ensuring learning. As such, "utilizing effective instructional strategies and designing learning experiences that enable the participants to experience the innovation through attributes of innovations" becomes very critical ([31], p. 22). It is also important to note that innovative teaching and learning is much more than just downloading instructional information/materials. Yet, 'information alone is instruction' [32] implying the need for careful scrutiny in selecting appropriate online materials for the students.

Life will never be the same again post COVID-19. The pandemic led to lockdown in all countries around the world and businesses have been closed, public transport is closed, public gatherings prohibited, and educational institutions closed. This has disoriented all people in one way or another and their normal daily activities disrupted. Now people need to think deeper and creatively to be able to survive, yet, the twenty-first century skills are on high demand. These skills could be developed/gained through social interactive learning [33]—enhanced by modern tools and applications.
