On 23 December 2022, the International Centre for Higher Education Innovation under the auspices of UNESCO (UNESCO-ICHEI) and Addis Ababa University (AAU), Ethiopia, jointly inaugurated the Smart Classroom (SCR) along with a high-level roundtable discussion on Digital Transformation for Quality Higher Education in Ethiopia: the role of smart technologies and teacher professional development at Institute of Technology (AAiT) at AAU. The ceremony was attended by Dr. Emebet Mulugeta, Academic Vice President of Addis Ababa University, Dr. Eba Mijena, Chief Executive Officer-Academic Affairs of the Ministry of Education in Ethiopia, Dr. Zelalem Asefa, Chief Executive Officer of ICT and Digital Education of the Ministry of Education, Mr. Che Zhaoguang, Culture Counsellor of the Chinese Embassy in Ethiopia, Mr. Zhiqian Wang, Vice President of WEDON Education Group (sponsoring enterprise of the Smart Classroom (SCR) at AAU), and members of the UNESCO-ICHEI team and representatives from AAU in Ethiopia.

Group photos of participants in AAU

Participants from UNESCO-ICHEI

In the beginning, Dr. Emebet Mulugeta, Academic Vice President of AAU, said that the COVID-19 epidemic has given AAU a lot of lessons, including conducting classes online by tackling plenty of problems in terms of technology, skills, information and awareness, and thus, from that time onwards, AAU has been very engaged and invested in expanding online education and supporting this type of project. She expressed her gratitude to UNESCO-ICHEI and WEDON Education Group, and highlighted the importance of launching the Smart Classroom to create awareness and to involve other colleges using the classroom for different academic activities, including distance education.

Address by Dr. Emebet Mulugeta, Academic Vice President of Addis Ababa University

Dr. Eba Mijena, Chief Executive Officer-Academic Affairs of the Ministry of Education in Ethiopia expressed his gratitude to UNESCO-ICHEI and IIOE's support to Ethiopian's higher education sector. According to him, technology plays a vital role in today's academic and research projects in HEIs. The SCR project will empower AAU with enhanced technological capabilities to facilitate academic exchanges. In the future, he hopes Ethiopian HEIs could leverage the resources provided by UNESCO-ICHEI to apply technologies into course design, teacher empowerment, and project management to drive the digital transformation of higher education.

Mr. Che Zhaoguang, Culture Counsellor of the Chinese Embassy in Ethiopia, congratulated the successful inauguration of the SCR in Ethiopia and acknowledged the significant contribution of UNESCO-ICHEI to higher education. He reviewed the cooperation between Ethiopia and China in the past years, stating that the partnership between the two countries has achieved promising results, and the two sides will continue to collaborate to advance social development and to promote friendship between the two countries.

Ms. Bi Xiaohan, Assistant Director and Chief of Africa and West Asia Programme Office of UNESCO-ICHEI, delivered the remarks on behalf of Director of UNESCO-ICHEI Prof. Li Ming. Ms. Bi Xiaohan expressed her sincere gratitude to all the officials, colleagues, and partners for attending today's event. She noted the SCR established in AAU has set an example of successful cross-regional university-industrial collaboration between SUSTech, AAU, UNESCO-ICHEI and WEDON Education Group. She hopes the SCR will provide powerful hardware and software facilities to continue empowering digital teaching and learning in HEIs. Looking forward, she stressed that UNESCO-ICHEI will keep cooperating with AAU to implement various projects to strengthen teacher professional development, to build quality educational resources, to strengthen research and to promote digital transformation of higher education.

Address by Ms. Bi Xiaohan, Assistant Director and Chief of Africa and West Asia Programme Office

Mr. Zhiqian Wang, Vice President of WEDON Education Group, expressed his gratitude for UNESCO-ICHEI's coordination and Addis Ababa University's cooperation throughout the project. He stated that SCR has served more than 20,000 students during the COVID-19 pandemic and he hoped to further strengthen exchanges with Ethiopian HEIs to promote the use of technology to improve education quality.

Address by Mr. Zhiqian Wang, Vice President of WEDON Education Group

Following the opening remarks, Mr. Hassan Adeel Shehzad, Programme Specialist and CTO of SCR project of UNESCO-ICHEI, provided a systematic review of development of SCR projects in HEIs in different countries, and introduced teacher and learner engagement as well as courses delivered through SCR. Dr. Feng Siyuan, Chief of Knowledge Production and Communications Centre of UNESCO-ICHEI, introduced the role of International Institute of Online Education (IIOE) in supporting digital transformation, interdisciplinary training, long-term teacher professional development, and educational technology development.

Afterwards, participants engaged in a high-level panel discussion with the theme of Empowering Higher Education in Ethiopia through Smart Technologies and Teacher Professional Development to discuss key trends of higher education in Ethiopia and how digital technologies and teacher professional development could be better leveraged to support quality, inclusive and equitable higher education, with specific focus on the roles of IIOE and public-private partnerships such as the SCR project.

In the end, WEDON Smart Classroom at Addis Ababa University has officially been launched under the witness of all participants following the ribbon-cutting ceremony.