Students connecting globally to visualise and re-engineer universities for a better world post COVID-19
Overview
Since its emergence in December 2019 in Wuhan China, COVID-19 has evolved into a pandemic, affecting billions of lives across the globe, causing deaths, illnesses and economic downturn, with Africa and Asia’s economies being affected the most. This virus has caused global poverty and education inequalities. Evidence reveals that Covid-19 will likely cause another increase in global poverty since 1998 (Daniel et al, 2020). Estimates further suggest that 49 million people will be pushed to extreme poverty as a result of this pandemic in the current year alone. Out of these estimates, studies indicated that despite Africa and Asia having been hit relatively less by the virus, over 23 million people from Sub-Saharan Africa and 16 million people in South Asia are projected to be pushed into poverty (Daniel et al, 2020).
COVID-19 Pandemic Effects on Education
Education is one of the sectors heavily affected by the pandemic. The closure of learning institutions across the globe has negatively affected education standards in terms of access, quality, equity and investments. About 258 million children both of Primary and Secondary school age were out of school before the pandemic. However, due to the prevailing status of Covid-19 pandemic, over 1.725 billion children worldwide have been forced to stay at home (UNESCO, 2020). Data from the World Food Programme shows that over 310 million children in low and middle income countries benefited from feeding programmes at school, which boosted enrolment more so for girls, which was vital in alleviating financial strain to poor families and also improved the nutritional standards of children (World Food Programme, 2013). Since the start of the pandemic, increased malnourishment and hunger has been witnessed and this has increased poverty levels across the globe.
Regardless of the challenges witnessed in the education sector, many governments and education stakeholders have instituted measures to promote continuity of education in the face of this pandemic. However, these measures can only be achieved if student-to-student and teacher-to student connectivity can be re-engineered to meet the new-normal.
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