**7.1 Research question 1: what are the educational innovations that were implemented during COVID-19 pandemic by South African and Zimbabwean universities?**

Considering all technological advancement proliferation across the globe there was common effort to use them, but issues of ICT infrastructure was the point of difference. For example, University A in south Africa suggested that use of 4th industrial revolution technologies such augmented reality, virtual reality, and robotics in managing virtual classes or online classes [14]. However, erratic electricity and poor ICT infrastructure disrupted the potential of operating artificial intelligence based technologies in higher institution of learning in South Africa [25]. The common innovations in South Africa universities innovations were zoom, Microsoft teams, emails, blackboard, Moodle, and other Wed based learning Management systems and to a lesser extent WhatsApp [5, 10, 13]. In Zimbabwe innovations that were implemented are these among others; google class, zoom, email, universities websites, and WhatsApp platforms [9, 18, 19]. The innovations available in both countries were the same however the implementation was determined by cost of

data, ICT infrastructure, availability of electronic gadgets and many other factors. It is evident from the literature that innovations in developing countries are still lagging compared to their developed counterparts. This will lead us to the next research question.
