**6. Barriers hindering Africa's HEIs to embrace ICT in teaching and learning**

In Africa, embracing the advancing ICTs and mobile technologies to support virtual learning through enriched pedagogy and curriculum delivery remains a major challenge [12]. As such, HEIs have to proactively deal with these barriers in order to respond effectively with associated global demands. These barriers include but not limited to; lack of digital technologies, high cost of Internet and low broadband connectivity, inadequate ICT literacy, emerging information security threats, and unreliable power supply [25]. Other barriers that also hinder innovative use of ICT include "lack of confidence, experience, motivation, and training; access to resources and timetabled use of dedicated ICT classrooms; unreliability of equipment; classroom practices which clash with the culture of student exploration, collaboration, debate, and interactivity within which much technology-based activity is said to be situated" ([27], p. 28). Indeed, lack of online pedagogical skills of teachers and students, negative attitude about online learning, over emphasis on technology at the expense of learning, lack of support for online learning [28] and the COVID-19 pandemic have also compromised the progress made by majority of HEIs in Africa in their effort to embrace the new normal to support online pedagogy.
