This is work-in-progress research-to-practice. Computer-based solutions are viewed as key to many technological problems, especially in reducing the impact of technology on the environment. At the same time, these computing solutions have their negative impacts. Such negative impacts are not understood by many computing specialists, as computing graduates have not been made aware of these undesirable impacts of their solutions. Based on frameworks such as CC2020, most computing curricula in Southern Africa, do not incorporate sustainability concepts. This means computing graduates of these African institutions will continue to view the quality of their computing solutions as defined by curricula that lack emphasis on sustainability. However, Africa's contribution to engineering education with a green twist can address this predicament. By integrating sustainability principles into computing and engineering curricula, African higher education institutions (HEI) can pioneer a new generation of professionals equipped with knowledge and skills to develop sustainable green technological solutions. Such an approach will not only address local challenges but will also position Africa as a major contributor to green computing and sustainable engineering practices, which are increasingly crucial in the global effort to mitigate environmental degradation. Using Design Science Research (DSR), incorporating Action Research, this paper discusses the process of formulating a green-friendly computing curriculum for use by five African universities, participating in a European Union-funded project, Grow Green Africa (Gr2A). This hybrid approach to curriculum development ensures the viability of the resulting curriculum and its adaptability and sustainability over time. The designed curriculum incorporates sustainability principles aimed at fostering sustainable practices in the computing sector. The competency-based learning model encompasses knowledge, skills, and dispositions required to execute tasks in various fields of computing. Such an approach transcends the traditional “knowing-what” paradigm and encompasses the “know-how” and “know-why” aspects of applied tasks. Developing competencies in areas such as green computing and sustainability is proposed as vital for meeting the demands and future trends in Southern Africa. By revamping curricula to include sustain ability aspects, higher educational institutions can equip students with the necessary knowledge and skills enabling them to integrate sustainable practices into their computing endeavors, thus reducing the negative impact of computing on the environment. This proactive approach not only promotes environmental stewardship but also aligns with the broader goals of human development and prosperity in the Southern Africa region. Furthermore, it positions Africa as a hub for innovative and sustainable green engineering solutions, contributing to the global effort to address environmental challenges while driving economic growth and social development. This research would also be important to curriculum developers as it gives a clear process to follow when incorporating sustainability concepts into engineering curricula in general and computing in particular.

This innovative practice paper describes Academic or institutional change for Graduate Education. Africa is a continent filled with unutilized young talent. This is due to several factors such as limited access to quality education, especially in engineering and computing. A plugin campus refers to a minibranch or remote campus of a base university (usually from the Global North) that operates in another country (usually in the Global South) at the host university's campus. We report an analysis of a case study, where the University Turku ran its plugin campus at the University of Namibia during 2019–24. Its main aim was to offer studies especially in computing, but also to be a catalyst for the University of Namibia and to co-design digital solutions for African challenges. We report how, throughout its operation, the plugin campus has interacted with various individuals and significantly impacted the lives of many. It has identified and trained local talent that otherwise cannot afford to get any education in computing. The five most important lessons learned are that computing and more widely engineering education have to (1) listen to and learn from the local community's demands, especially by the young people, (2) recognize and support talent beyond formal education, (3) adapt to different cultures for better and mutual learning, (4) rethink the traditional educational models of the Global North to better fit different expectations of people, and (5) dedicate time to and trust to build local partnerships for making a difference in people's lives.

In the rural town of Opuwo, Namibia, a team of five young people,, have been working since 2017 on their toy car business. We call them street engineers, because, while they are formally unqualified as engineers, they are informally, or streetwise, qualified because they engineer solutions that meet with their customers' demands, with an inventive twist. Recently, the street engineers joined forces with a university research team to extend their range of products to include robotics. The context was interesting for researchers seeking for innovative practice in engineering education, for several reasons. First, it provides a prime example of a local situation where an increasing number of young talents, despite having limited or irrelevant formal engineering education, globally struggle with designing inventive solutions, engineered of components that are available. Secondly, it poses challenges for devising informal approaches for engineering education, complementing contemporary, typically formal approaches. Thirdly, it calls for engineering education that starts from recognizing young people's hunger for improving their livelihoods through fast-tracked learning. Fourthly, the street engineers aim to develop technologies which, by far, extend the existing state-of-the-art in their context, paving the way for the application and even the design of advanced technologies, especially robotics, at the grassroots, a much promoted political slogan in the Global South. The qualitative analysis of the data sourced in the real-life context of the street engineers identified twelve dimensions of limitations that restrict the work, achievements and outcomes of the street engineers. At the same time, the further interpretation of the limitations indicates a range of opportunities by which design or engineering activities, including entry-level robotics, liberates street engineers from the identified limitations. The context shares the characteristics of places where oppressed people globally live, because of the socio-economic profile of Opuwo and the surrounding Kunene region. Paulo Freire suggests that instead of what he calls the banking model of education, where knowledge is deposited in learners' minds and which, hence, does not transform their living conditions, the oppressed only can be liberated by problem-posing education which aims at identifying challenges and then designing disruptive solutions to them, by those that are limited or bound by their poverty. While obtained within a given context, the results of the investigation can be re-contextualized and used for reforming engineering education in the Global South, to be relevant in the era of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. In an increasingly diverse, global world, robotics invites the much too often marginalized young people to open their minds for and by engineering novel solutions.

In this Full Paper, we report our experiences of teaching AI in a Namibian university in collaboration with a Finnish university and a few companies. Within the Computing Education Community, only a minority of research reports have experience teaching Artificial Intelligence (AI), and very little research has been conducted on teaching and learning AI in Africa. Given the high importance and impact of AI, this is alarming. Learning and teaching AI in an African higher education setting provides unique challenges compared to the standardized approach in the Global North. Our undergraduate course in AI was carried out in a novel way that emphasized the creative application of AI to meet the requirements of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR). We chose an approach that helps Computer science graduates to explore and get inspired by the opportunities of AI at the ground.