The Fourth Arabic Digital Content Forum, hosted by the State of Qatar, was concluded on October 7, 2020. ALECSO was involved in the organization of this event, along with the Qatari Ministry of Transport and Communications, AICTO, ESCWA, and ITU, under the auspices of the League of Arab States.
Dr. Mohamed Jemni, Director of the ICT Department, chaired the session on “the Future Prospects of Distance Education in the Arab Region”. He offered an overview about ALECSO’s e-learning initiative in response to the education disruption caused by the COVID-19 crisis, along with the series of projects launched by ALECSO to promote e-learning, open education, and open educational resources in the Arab world.
The Forum came out with a set of recommendations that stress the need to :
Develop and publish domain names in Arabic to facilitate access to digital content for non-users of foreign languages;
Have a greater Arab representation in relevant international groupings and organizations;
Unite Arab efforts to publish content, and sponsor and support projects designed to encourage innovation in developing and increasing Arabic digital content,
Implement laws that protect intellectual property to encourage investment in professional content, and provide institutional and financial support for content developers,
Develop high-quality digital Arabic content to help Arabic speakers have access to this content and allow them to express themselves and disseminate their cultural output in their mother tongue.
