Development education has typically been characterised by scarcity.  Primary school education is not available to all, usually because of limited physical availability rather than by policy, conversion from primary to secondary is limited by secondary places, tertiary places are very limited and overbid.  Training for teachers is typically inadequate to meet policy demands.

In this climate, abundance of resources should be a benefit.  However, to use a shopping analogy, an abundance of formal clothes is of little value if you want a tee shirt.  The products are only abundant if you can access the online shop and have the skills to navigate it.

Limited or absent digital skills and the heritage of a rigid curriculum and didactic teaching system are the main problems.  Most teachers at school level are badly paid and many will have no electricity at home, let alone a computer.  Hence digital skills will have to become part of the teacher training curriculum or be learnt on school facilities.  However, IT facilities are usually controlled by the IT dept and their view of skills tends to be hardware and application driven (because these are in the curriculum), rather than relevant to external search and use of online tools.  The same is true for school pupils.  The development of SMART Knowledge Hubs in communities, outside the school system, is  being piloted in Tanzania to address this problem from an employment market perspective.

It is likely therefore that use of OER will only occur if driven centrally as part of the required curriculum, or as part of resources to support teaching of the curriculum.  This may be particularly true of more visual concepts, which might be supported by a DVD or an online demonstration.  Hence, at school level, the abundance of little OER may be relevant if it provides more options within the presentation of the curriculum .  Specialist providers such as the Commonwealth of Knowledge or South African OER sources are likely to be the most relevant contextual sources.

In tertiary education there is more scope.  Entry numbers are so small, and so restricted to academic high achievers, that one can assume a higher level of skills for those achieving entrance.  Curricula are also more open.  The recently announced discussions between Coursera and a Tanzanian university to enable incorporation of more market relevant material into courses indicates hope for value from the MOOC process into development education and ultimately into the economy.