The flow of research is often unidirectional, flowing from the global North to the global South (Kanwar, Kodhandaraman, & Umar, 2010) and to this, OER is no exception. It is argued that Š—“The African continent generates only 0.4% of global online content and this drops to 0.02% if South Africa is excludedŠ— (Gray, 2007, p. 35). The impression is that Afrika is largely absent in the OER discourse. Cases from South Africa are very common, however, for most of the other countries the questions is if OER movement non-existent in most of Afrika or if the activities occurring there are not being shared.
There are different entries through which one can enter the open education discourse. The three main gates are: 1) textbook affordability, 2) open pedagogy, 3) equity and 4) access. These conversations can be different by geographical areas, depending on the needs or priorities of the community. Little information exist on what gate(s) is used most in Afrikan countries. This is in large part because the voice from Afrika, either through Afrikan researchers themselves or researchers examining the phenomenon within Afrikan contexts are often missing. In this presentation we present two cases aimed at contributing Afrikan voices to the discourse on open education. Our presentation will be based on research in Namibia and Uganda, aimed at answering the following questions:
1. What does open education look like in Namibia and Uganda?
2. What are the values of openness from teachers in Namibia and Uganda?
3. What are the projects around open education taking place in Namibia and Uganda?
Our study uses a comparative and international education method (Asino, 2015), which is effective in conducting cross-cultural research. Through a combination of data from teachers and document analysis from the two countries, we aim to contribute a voice from Namibia and Uganda to the conference theme of Sharing, Gratitude, and Hope.
