Wednesday, August 8, 2001

Australia Will Spend $100-Million on Distance Programs for Developing Countries By GEOFFREY MASLEN Melbourne, Australia The Australian government will spend more than $100-million over the next five years on a program aimed at bringing education and skills training to developing countries via the Internet. The plan was announced Friday by the Foreign Minister, Alexander Downer, and the president of the World Bank, James Wolfensohn. Mr Wolfensohn, an Australian expatriate, proposed the idea on a visit to Australia late last year. Dubbed the "virtual Colombo plan," after an Australian aid program in the 1950s that brought thousands of young Asians to study at universities here, the new program represents Australia's most ambitious foreign-aid effort in decades. Tens of thousands of teachers, students, and officials in developing countries will receive training in specific skills over the Internet, becoming "virtual students" in Australian universities. Younger students will undertake Net-based school programs devised in Australia. Mr. Downer said that the initial $100-million was the minimum amount the government would spend on the program, and that he would ask the cabinet for more money as the plan developed and ideas flowed in from Australia and developing countries. "What we are doing today is planting a seed from which a great gum tree will grow," Mr. Downer said. "There will be an enormous range of ideas and proposals that emerge from this seed. It's going to become the fundamental point of our aid program. The scope is limitless." He said Australia will pay some of the cost of setting up Internet connections in countries in the South Pacific, Africa, South Asia, and Southeast Asia, many of which lack the infrastructure necessary for online learning. Information and communications centers will be set up in teachers' colleges and country towns to teach the teachers and increase community access. Australia's Education Department is currently undertaking an inventory of online courses offered by Australian universities that could be adapted for use by the new group of virtual students. Mr. Wolfensohn said the Australian program is the first of its kind by any country. It will link up with an $800-million World Bank plan to use the Internet to help developing countries avoid becoming victims of the "digital divide" as the developed world goes online. He said that governments in developing countries realize that they need to get online, and that he had found Internet cafes flourishing even in small towns in Vietnam. Easy-to-print version E-mail this article

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