Intelligent CIO Africa Issue 40 | Page 12

NEWS African Development Bank appoints Pepin Vougo in new position UNESCO and Huawei collaborate on online education support during COVID-19 African Development Bank has announced the appointment of Pepin Vougo as Acting Director, Corporate Information and Technology Department. Pepin Vougo has more than 20 years of experience in technology and its application. He is a seasoned executive with depth and breadth of experience in delivering complex technology solutions on an international scale. He benefits from both private sector and MDB experience. Vougo has been with the African Development Bank for seven years, first as Infrastructure and Telecommunications Manager and then as Business Solutions Development Manager in charge of the Bank’s Application Development portfolio. As well as delivering numerous successful online applications to help digitise the bank, he led the development of the 2017–2021 Digital Strategy. Prior to the African Development Bank, Pepin was Deputy Division Chief at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) where he was responsible for IT service delivery to over 100 offices around the world. He oversaw an IT budget of US$12 million (capital) and US$11 million (operating) and managed a team of over 100 people. Before joining the IMF, Pepin’s career was in leading private sector companies. He was a Vice President of Engineering with JP Morgan Chase from 2006 to 2009, in charge of the Global Software and Configuration Management Group supporting over 5,000 developers worldwide. Pepin also led a major workforce reconfiguration exercise to allow the company to respond to a rapidly changed economic context. To mitigate the impact of the COVID-19 outbreak, UNESCO launched the Global Education Coalition, in which international organisations, civil society and enterprises are engaged to ensure that ‘Learning never stops’. As one of the coalition members, Huawei has been dedicated to bringing the benefits of technology to everyone. Huawei recently held a live webinar for online higher education to help ensure continuous online education during the suspension of schools and universities. The webinar, as a special part of Huawei’s Learn ON programme, was jointly organised by Huawei and its partners including UNESCO IITE and UNESCO- ICHEI. Leaders and experts from global enterprises and universities were invited to share their practice and challenges in online education during the COVID-19 crisis. They also discussed feasible solutions that can ensure both education continuity and online education quality when schools and universities are closed. Wu Lintuo, Director of Education Partnership, Talent Ecosystem Development Dept Huawei, introduced an all-round solution to the new requirements of global Huawei Academies during COVID-19. During the sharing session, Ann Therese Ndong-Jatta, Director for the Bureau of Education in Africa, UNESCO, and Samuel Kinuthia from Zetech University of Kenya, as well as other experts from global higher educational institutions, introduced their experience in developing online education schemes and organising online learning. 12 INTELLIGENTCIO www.intelligentcio.com