Econet’s Online Education Program Is Now Available: 1st Course Free, But Many Unanswered Questions?

A few weeks ago we released a press release concerning Econet’s partnership with Shaw Academy that promised to bring an education program in the near future. The promised program is here and you can now sign up.

The courses are in partnership with Dublin-based Shaw Academy and carry a qualification accredited by the European Qualifications Framework. Econet stated that they are trying to make education more accessible and affordable in Africa:

We are passionate about overcoming the barriers to quality, affordable education which is continuously faced across Africa, by leveraging online learning platforms such as Shaw Academy,” explained Tendai Mashingaidze, the CEO of Econet Education, “Given the broad variety of lifestyle and business courses that Shaw Academy provides, we noted an opportunity to provide accredited online opportunities to Africans between 15 to 55 years of age at a very affordable fee.

Here are the courses on offer right now:

• Digital Marketing
• Graphic Design
• Photography
• Cryptocurrency
• Content Marketing
• Leadership
• Photoshop
• Personal Nutrition
• Social Media Marketing
• Lightroom
• Viral Marketing
• Sports Nutrition
• Health and Fitness
• Mobile Development
• English For Business
• Financial Trading And Investing

On the website when you select a course you are taken to a page where you can sign up and see other reviews from students who took a similar course.

Shaw Academy is a fairly big online education platform. Some of their courses have been taken by over a million people: for their diploma in photography 1 203 710 to be precise. The courses are also rated/reviewed as mentioned before. The first course will also be free, so I guess that will be a good taster before you decide whether or not to pursue other programs on offer. Compared to other courses on offer from other sites such as Udacity, Lynda, Udemy and EdX the offering does seem to be a bit more sparse.

Shaw’s partnership with Econet will be limited to a select number of courses and not the entire catalogue as offered by Shaw. Some of the courses missing may have been intentionally left out by Econet: one of the courses left out include Shaw’s Music courses. Maybe Econet left these out intentionally because they knew their audience would likely overlook these. It’s just an assumption on my part and we will be contacting Econet for comment.

What are the payment methods?

We are also yet to understand how the online courses will be paid for after the trial package ends. The website right now lists that payments will be made in Euro. If this is the case that will mean a barrier has already been created as the foreign currency situation in our country will mean this service is available to a select few. When we contact Econet we will also be communicating with Econet to understand how payment will actually work.