The first phase of the study, conducted in 2010, used online questionnaires (the so-called e-Consultations), interviews and desk studies to gather opinion from a diversity of stakeholders to identify and elaborate priorities. The study confirmed that the broad categories identified as priorities in the ICT thematic programme of the EU’s FP7 continue to be important areas for mapping out future bi-regional collaborative research priorities. In carrying out the consultations for this study, the following high-level thematic areas were identified:

• e-Learning
• e-Health
• e-Governance
• e-Infrastructures
• Digital Library & Content
• e-Inclusion & e-Accessibility
• ICT for Environmental Sustainability and Energy Efficiency / Green ICT
• Future Networks (including Cloud Computing)
• Software development and services (including Open Source Software)
• ITM – Intelligent Transport Systems
• e-Agriculture

Among these areas, stakeholders’ opinion pointed to the domains of e-Learning and e-Health as among the most important for receiving the attention of future collaborative research. The field of m-Applications emerged as well, from wider investigation in phase one, as an area of high potential for collaboration.

The second phase of the study (2011) took a more in-depth look into these three domains with the aim of investigating trends and identifying topics for possible future collaborative research. This second phase drew on three sources for its data: an online questionnaire (a so-called e-Consultation), an expert group meeting, and Internet-based literature.

Even though questionnaire response rate was slightly lower than expected (a low response rate potentially undermines the representative nature of the data) synergy between the responses received and the literature analysed gives confidence that even this quite small sample set is representative of a wider opinion.

Moreover, much useful information emerged from this second phase of the study: the domains of e-Learning, e-Health and m-Applications are each at early stages of maturity and all the more so in Africa, where policies, regulatory environments, systems and platforms, standards, infrastructure and technologies are all evolving, although not necessarily in parallel, nor in a coordinated way.

In a globalised world however, trends emerging in one region become drivers of technology in other regions. Developing regions in particular, where older systems, standards and technologies may not yet be fully embedded, have significant opportunities to leapfrog intermediate technologies and become leaders.

Challenges listed by respondents in each of the domains were diverse but rather generic in nature. Thus for example, tangible issues of infrastructure weaknesses, technological hardware and devices, network and broadband access came up repeatedly in discussions, in the literature and in online questionnaires in both study phases. Similarly, “softer” issues related to institutional matters, content, systems, standards, policies, regulatory environments and social attitudes also appeared routinely. At the same time, notwithstanding the many generic issues, each domain has its own priorities, and these may present opportunities for collaborative research.

A striking conclusion arising from the study is that, across the continent of Africa, there is abundant evidence for a multiplicity of innovative applications of ICT and particularly of the migration of services from PCs to mobile devices across many domains including health and education, each having the potential to radically overhaul the way in which services and knowledge are delivered and flow. The demand for mobile applications and solutions is rising and represents a huge opportunity to drive innovation in any ICT-supported domain. Developers are increasingly becoming aware of this and mobile-based applications will continue to be an important element of the innovation ecosystem in the short and medium term.

The perception among stakeholders of such a diversity of challenges may sit at odds with the diversity of initiatives, which would seem, with just a cursory investigation, to be addressing many of the challenges raised. This apparent contradiction may simply be a feature of relatively early phase of the domains of e-Health and e-Learning in Africa in which technologies and systems are being tested and from which in due course “winners” will emerge and spread more widely. Stakeholders refer to incompatibilities between initiatives and systems causing inefficiencies, and it seems to be the case broadly speaking that few successful initiatives have yet been scaled up to a continental level.

Faced with diversity it is a challenge in itself to identify tangible researchable topics, which could be addressed through bi-regional collaboration. In our recommendations we have sought nevertheless to fairly represent the views of the stakeholders. The supposition that these domains are at early stages may point the way to recommendations for collaborative action whose focus is on generating research based evidence for informed decision making, on expanding successful initiatives, and on support for key enabling IC technologies which have applicability across multiple domains.

For the e-Health, e-Learning and m-Applications domains, three outline proposal topics have been drawn from the questionnaire responses. Inevitably, these outline topics will need further elaboration:

e-Health:

1. Study providing up-to-date picture of the state of play of e-Health regarding, for instance, acceptability of e-Health technology, rural and local sustainability of e-Health
2. Research on e-Health system components for remote and rural communities in Africa

e-Learning:

1. Research on e-Learning for primary, secondary and higher & continued education via mobile devices powered by renewable energy sources
2. Study providing an up-to-date picture of the state of play of e-Learning regarding, for instance, best practices at primary education level

m-Applications:

1. Study providing an up-to-date picture of the state of play of m-Applications (phones, multimedia tablet) related to e-Health and e-Learning at various levels across Europe and Africa
2. Interdisciplinary research on computational linguistics to support multi-lingual access to mobile applications and content

The complete study on research priorities can be downloaded at the following links:

• Report on phase one of the study (2010)
• Report on phase two of the study (2011)