South Africa exports online courses back to the West

By Bill Hicks, BBC

South Africa is producing online courses to sell back to the US and Europe. Founders, brothers Rob and Sam Paddock, are part of a new breed of academic entrepreneur. The company grew out of a project to help their father, a property lawyer who lectured at the University of Cape Town, to extend his teaching to professionals who had no chance of attending lectures. They were aware of a massive hunger among African professionals for expert, high-quality “up-skilling” – especially in fast-changing fields of IT, commerce, law and accounting. “We talked to UCT [University of Cape Town]. It was hard work convincing them but eventually they agreed to run a trial,” said Rob Paddock. The pilot short courses they developed were marketed under the UCT banner, and provided successful students with a certificate from one of Africa’s top higher education institution. The results for those first students were “so good that the UCT people said, let’s do more”.

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