African higher education institution Covenant University has partnered with online learning platform Coursera to address the need for job-relevant skills on the continent.

According to a statement released to the media, Covenant will offer full-scale blended learning to 9,000 undergraduate and graduate students.

Prof. AAA Atayero, the Vice-Chancellor, Covenant University, said, “Covenant has a long history pioneering and disrupting the higher education system in Africa and with this new partnership it is now leading in accelerating the long-overdue digital transformation in African higher education. We understand that Coursera for Campus empowers any university to offer high-quality, job-relevant online learning to students, alumni, faculty, and staff. We are thrilled to both activate this partnership with Coursera and stand as the first institution fully integrating high quality onsite and online learning in Africa with them.”

Through the partnership, every Covenant student will have access to the Coursera catalogue of 3,800 online courses, as long as the individual remains a student, alumni, or faculty of the institution.

Intensive work has gone into tying 30% of the credit units that each student requires per semester, to Coursera courses from other universities. This has been done using CourseMatch, Coursera’s tool to match Coursera courses to on-campus courses at colleges and universities across the globe.

“The partnership is a strategic priority for us. It provides learners at Covenant access to the peak of education. It will allow alumni, staff and faculty to maintain a viable edge in the constantly changing world of work, said Dr. Ada Peter, Director International Office, and Linkages.

From early 2017, Covenant has embraced several innovative learning collaborations with organisations, including MITx, the African Development Bank’s Coding for Employment and Sciences Po International Virtual Exchange Program for students.

The academic institution says while COVID-19 caught most universities off guard, the same challenge has provided opportunities for universities like Covenant to pace into the world of blended and continuous lifelong learning.

Anthony Tattersall, Head of EMEA at Coursera, added: “With an estimated 1,650 higher ed institutions in Africa, access to education for the relevant age group remains the lowest in the world, at 5%. We are therefore thrilled to be partnering with Covenant University to help them provide full scale blended learning, as they pave the way for change. Amongst all the disruptions that COVID-19 has posed us, there are opportunities. Rethinking what the future of education should look like and adopting an approach that helps us improve it is one of them. Covenant University has seized this opportunity. We look forward to seeing them grow as our partnership develops.”