by Sian Lovegrove, Director of the Open University of Tanzania, International Studies Centre
In this post, Sian shares how she finds light in the darkness of the coronavirus pandemic.
As I sit here in Dar es Salaam looking out across a flat Indian Ocean, quiet golden beaches, with a frothy coffee in my sweaty hands it feels like the calm before the coronavirus storm. This is a time of great concern for our global friends and family and people are dying in their thousands. However, I am an eternal optimist and I am turning this period of hibernation, stagnation and global frustration into a business and personal opportunity.
The White Biter
It all started when my American neighbours got a new pet dog. They chose a white dog because they thought it looked cute but ended up instead, with an aggressive beast which they could not control. I christened it “White Biter” after it attacked me the first time. The thing could sense my disdain and every time I arrived or left my house White Biter would run at me growling, bare his teeth and try to get at my ankles. After several months of running the gauntlet I realised that in order to avoid being hospitalised, I needed to find somewhere else to live.
The new house
While the idea of moving house in the middle of a virus pandemic would not be something I would choose to, it turned out to be a really good decision. We don’t have a lockdown in Tanzania so we are free to move around, hence the logistics of moving house are no different to normal. I put the word around that I was looking for a place and was inundated with cheap deals and offers, agents (no agents please) called me and begged me to visit their properties.
Eventually I chose a charming cottage on the peninsular and settled on less than half the normal price. You see the good thing about living in a country which has closed its borders is that there are a lot of empty holiday rentals owned by landlords with empty pockets. It’s a buyer’s market and so although it seems like a really bad idea, there are financial benefits to moving house in a time of global lockdown.
The new job
In addition to moving house, the six-month wait for a contract from The Open University of Tanzania came through and I started making connections with foreign universities, colleges and training centres. The university currently provides thousands of students in East Africa with quality online courses in the most popular subject areas. There is a demand not just for bachelors and master’s degrees, but for continuing professional development and this is where I see future growth coming from.
You can now get internationally recognised accredited qualifications from the Chartered Institution of Marketing, Association of Project Management and other professional organisations using online and virtual courses. And even better, since the outbreak of Covid-19 these organisations have responded to the crisis by moving to proctored online assessments. So now we in Africa can take the exams online rather than travelling to an exam centre in another city or country.
The opportunity
What this means is that there has never been a better time to start an online course to further your career and no better organisation to do it through than the Open University of Tanzania. Foreign training providers are acting quickly to move much more of their content online, developing more self-paced and virtual classes and are offering students at our university substantial discounts.
Why not use this time of isolation and homeworking to get yourself an accredited internationally recognised professional qualification? When the dust has settled we will emerge into a different world and we are all going to want to give ourselves an advantage.
I am not blind to the fact that this pandemic has brought death and worry to many but it doesn’t mean we can’t remain optimistic and forward-looking. Resilience is what makes us unbeatable.
Sian Lovegrove works as Director of the Open University of Tanzania, International Studies Centre. Tanzania is a world away from China where she spent 10 years running her own Chinese education company but she has found one similarity - the huge appetite for international education. Her mission is to help East Africans obtain scholarships and discounts on internationally accredited professional qualifications from the best training partners across the world.