West and Central African Research and Education Network

The People’s Open Access Education Initiative (Peoples-uni) was established as an educational charity to help reduce inequalities in access to the higher education required to build Public Health capacity through workforce development for health professionals in low- to middle-income countries (LMICs). Online learning, using open source software, Open Educational Resources and an international cadre of volunteer tutors, underpinned a low cost programme which produced a number of successful outcomes including university validated master’s level awards, continuing professional development, positive feedback from students, and the application by alumni of skills learned. Peoples-uni closed in 2021, its programme taken over by another organisation, and this paper builds on previous reports to summarise the experience and draw lessons for others who may wish to contribute in a similar way.

Introduction to LIBSENSE and what is happening at the national level in different countries, what’s new - Open Science policies, repositories, community building, national coordination in Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Morocco, Mozambique,<strong> </strong>Nigeria, South Africa, Tanzania, Tunisia and Uganda. Presentation from the virtual OR2020 workshop "Co-designing policies, repository infrastructures and services and strengthening open science communities in Africa" co-organized by WACREN, UbuntuNet Alliance, ASREN, EIFL, COAR, AfricaConnect 3, OpenAIRE and GÉANT.

This presentation was made at the COAR 2019 Annual Meeting &amp; General Assembly, Lyon (France)

Open Online Courses (OOCs) are offered by Peoples-uni at http://ooc.peoples-uni.org to complement the courses run on a separate site for academic credit at http://courses.peoples-uni.org. They provide a wide range of online learning resources beyond those usually found in credit bearing Public Health courses. They are self-paced, and students can enrol themselves at any time and utilise Open Educational Resources free of copyright restrictions. In the two years that courses have been running, 1174 students from 100 countries have registered and among the 1597 enrollments in 15 courses, 15% gained a certificate of completion. Easily accessible and appealing to a wide geographical and professional audience, OOCs have the potential to play a part in establishing global Public Health capacity building programmes.