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Created to improve access to education in Africa, the project has the collaboration of the African Virtual University (AVU), the World Tourism Organisation (WTO), through the THEMIS-UNWTO Foundation, and Olympia Africa, an organisation linked to the International Olympic Committee.

The Campus for Peace-Africa project offers, among other things, training for virtual trainers and courses on human rights, environmental sustainability, conflict resolution, and support for employment and entrepreneurs. It also aims to become a forum for collaborative work where participating agencies can share information and make proposals while producing materials on different subjects.

The courses and materials are designed to be offered via the UOC’s virtual platform, the Global Campus and a website (wiki), which students and teachers can access at any time and from anywhere. African universities are offered online courses that cover a range of subjects related to human development.
Campus for Peace-Africa programmes are very wide-ranging, as they do not just include the courses contents themselves, but also a “resources” section that includes a series of complementary information materials and an extensive bibliography.

According to Eduard Vinyamata, Director of the UOC Campus for Peace, Cooperation, Development and Sustainability, “the Campus for Peace-Africa responds to the UOC and the AVU’s desire to help improve living conditions in more marginalised populations, through scientific and technical knowledge and the benefits that e-learning can bring”. Vinyamata believes that this virtual campus could be “an effective way of solving Africa’s social problems through education”.

About the UOC’s Campus for Peace

The Campus for Peace, the UOC’s charitable initiative, was founded in 2000 to coincide with the UNESCO International Year for the Culture of Peace, with the aim of placing the methodology and knowledge generated by the UOC at the service of peace, human rights, humanitarian aid, sustainability and literacy. The project runs training, research and awareness raising programmes with social and humanitarian ends, via its e-learning methodology.

The implicit aim of the Campus, which is based on basic ethical principles, such as those of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights or the Earth Charter, is to provide people with knowledge they need to live autonomously, to be able to resolve their own problems, to defend their fundamental rights without violence, and live together in peace. Among other contributions, the Campus offers courses to train trainers, continuous pedagogical advice, expert volunteers from around the world and specific teaching materials. Currently, there are more than three thousand students being taught one of the hundreds of subjects from the different knowledge areas by the more than two hundred teachers on the Campus.

This initiative allows for the organisation of meetings of experts to establish strategic plans and shared tactics, the creation of operational networks and publications with innovative contents in the field of human rights, conflict resolution and peace processes, environmental sustainability and international cooperation.

The UOC’s Campus for Peace collaborates with organisations such as the Red Cross, Amnesty International, Gaia Education, UNITAR, UNDP, World Organisation of the Scouting Movement, and a number of universities, city councils and citizen associations from around the world.
Projects run by the UOC’s Campus for Peace have a team of multidisciplinary professionals from the UOC. This team of experts is charge of promoting official training, providing skills for development cooperation through the Virtual School for Cooperation and for environmental education through the EcoUniversity, and offering peace studies through the University Network for Peace and Conflict Resolution.


About the African Virtual University

The African Virtual University (AVU) was founded in 1997 as a World Bank project and was registered as a non-governmental organisation in accordance with the 1990 Coordination Act for Non-Governmental Organisations, under Kenyan law on 1 May 2002. Also, in 2002, sovereign states and other members of the AVU signed a series of statues to establish the AVU as an intergovernmental organisation and revoke its registration as a non-governmental organisation. The AVU has its headquarters in Nairobi, Kenya, and a regional office in Dakar, Senegal.

The mission of the AVU is to facilitate the use of open and distance e-learning methodologies in African institutions of higher education. The AVU envisages an Africa where open and distance e-learning (ODeL) plays an increasingly important role, especially in the university sector, and which enables levels of participation to grow significantly while at the same time ensuring quality.

The African Virtual University has been in existence for 12 years. During this time, it has created the largest network of open and distance e-learning institutions in Africa. Its most important asset is the ability to work beyond its frontiers and bring together the English, French and Portuguese language groups in Africa in the development of ODeL materials and methodologies.

The main areas where the AVU focuses its work are the development and dissemination throughout Africa of the academic content of open and distance e-learning; the creation of skills in African institutions of higher education by establishing ODeL centres and training personnel in the use of ODeL in Africa; the management side of running ODeL degree, diploma and certificate courses in Africa; the construction and management of large consortia of African teaching institutions that work on ODeL initiatives, and strengthening ODeL skills through seminars, workshops and advisory services.