The Open Courseware initiative, along with the US-Arab States Open Book Project, will provide an efficient and cost-effective way for universities to enhance access to high quality educational materials as well as sharing knowledge and best practices.

The OpenCourseWareConsortium is a worldwide community of hundreds of higher education institutions and associated organizations committed to advancing OpenCourseWare and its impact on global education. We serve as a resource for starting and sustaining OCW projects, as a coordinating body for the movement on a global scale, and as a forum for exchange of ideas and future planning.

Open Source Software (OSS) shows great promise for future technological innovation and application especially in the area of teaching and learning in Africa. It provides readily available software such as learning management systems (LMS) and learning content management systems (LCMs). Higher Learning Institutions (HLI) in developing countries can benefit from these OSS initiatives. This paper, based on two case studies (The University of the

Western Cape (UWC) in South Africa and the University of Dar es Salaam (UDSM) in Tanzania), discusses the application of OSS in teaching and learning and reflects on why the adoption of Open Courseware (OC) by HLI in Africa is very slow. The UWC Free Software Innovation Unit was visited and information was collected from the websites of both UWC and UDSM. It is anticipated that the findings of the study will be of interest to all stakeholders in the education sector in Africa.

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