 Never before in history has higher education been so vital in the economic and social development of countries, and never before have opportunities to read so many learners, millions globally, been so abundant, or the chance to accelerate learning been so possible. This makes the role of higher education institutions, like the ones represented at this dialogue, more important than ever. As the Asian Development Bank puts it, higher education institutions operate as incubators of the innovation and creative thinking needed for an economically competitive society. Inesco, as identified, higher education has been critical to addressing the sustainable development goals, introducing poverty, improving health, empowering women, and protecting the environment. Inesco's Director General sums it up this way. The evidence is unequivocal. Education saves and transforms lives. It may seem obvious on one level how education in general and higher education in particular benefit people. It equips individuals with knowledge, competencies, and skills that are needed in the labour market. But consider this from the World Bank in its Education Strategy 2020. Not only do investments in quality education lead to more rapid and sustainable economic growth and development, but educated individuals are more employable, able to earn higher wages, cope better with economic shocks, and raise healthier children. There is also much data these days to show that providing higher education to women is one way of enhancing gender equality and empowerment. In sub-Saharan Africa, for example, women with no education in the region average 6.7 birds, those with primary education average 5.8 birds, and those with secondary and higher education average 3.9 birds. And higher education not only influences women's choices of family size, it gives them better job opportunities, increase confidence, greater health and safety, and empowerment. All of this makes the provision of higher education and the job of higher education institutions at once exciting and a little daunting. So what are the global developments that are influencing higher education? In all countries, labour market needs are rapidly evolving, automation and digitisation of industry, agriculture and the knowledge economy are changing, what is taught, how it is taught, and when and where learners are likely to want to be taught. According to a study from Oxford University, 47% of occupations are at risk of being automated in the next few decades. This means that as many jobs change and others become obsolete, it will be essential for higher education to change to meet new knowledge and skill demands. At the same time, of course, graduates consistently need to upgrade their skills and companies need to top up their human capital. A 2013 OECD report points to the importance of higher education, especially in the light of the 2008 economic crisis that hurt many countries. The data illustrates a not so surprising fact. That a great deal of the economic and social hardship caused by the crisis fell chiefly on less educated individuals, their employment gap between well educated young people and those who left school early widened during the crisis. Across the OECD countries, on average, only 5% of the population with a tertiary education level were unemployed, while 13% of those without an upper secondary education faced unemployment. The implication here is clear, a person's education and field of study, especially at post-secondary education level, will determine the level of risk she or he faces during times of economic and social crisis. Going back to the World Bank and its Education Strategy 2020, the stunning rise of the middle income countries led by China, India and Brazil has intensified the desire of many nations to increase their competitiveness by building more highly skilled workforces. The value of higher education is also driving up the demand for higher education and that's exploding. From 150.5 million students worldwide seeking tertiary education in 2007, demand grew to 165 million in 2012. It is expected to reach 263 million by 2025, just 10 years away. Rapid advances in information and communication technology, ICT and other related developments are now constantly changing job profiles and skills demanded by labour markets. Yet, these advances also offer possibilities for increasing access, accelerated learning, improving the quality and management of education systems. In a recent publication, the NMC Horizon report 2015 on higher education, the experts agree on two long-term trends of technology adoption in higher education over five years. Firstly, advancing learning environments that are flexible and drive innovation and secondly, increasing the collaboration that takes place between higher education institutions. The report further focuses on the issue of measuring learning and the proliferation of open educational resources in the three to five year timeframe. In the short term, they focus on increasing the use of blended learning models and how learning spaces are redesigned. In all of these trends, technology is a key driver from massive open online courses or MOOCs and open educational resources to mobile technologies, flip classrooms, learning management systems and the proliferation of educational apps. These developments have radically changed how we understand both teaching and learning. Let me say a few words on MOOCs, as this seems to be the most relevant and impactful technology development that is influencing higher education. It has also created debates on the nature of learning and teaching using technology. MOOCs offer the opportunity to increase access to high quality education and access to global leaders in fields of study, all with minimal to no cost. Nevertheless, we have yet to see successful business models emerge to take on more MOOC development. But there are some downsides of MOOCs too. As UNESCO has summed it up, they can be costly and time consuming to produce. Most participants are already well educated and only about 5% of registrants actually complete their courses. For motivated learners who have appropriate technology and internet bandwidth, MOOCs provide an opportunity to participate in global learning and possibly to uncredits from globally renowned institutions. Yet, what about those learners who lack the technology and bandwidth requirements? Several MOOC providers are looking at ways to address these barriers. Coal, for example, has run MOOCs with various partners in the developing world with a view to research and understand the opportunity this kind of learning platform offers. In a recent Coal publication, authors Sandy Boga and Rory McGrill note that, MOOCs as a type of globally networked learning environment could become a very useful delivery model in the developing world, but not necessarily when tied to a specific platform. Setting up the MOOC is also a challenge. Coal has been testing the development of a portal for some of the MOOCs offered by Coal so that they can all be accessed via a single page. A partner institution can use this portal to configure its own MOOC platform in a short time, less than an hour, and customize it for immediate launch. The platform comes with a student management system, forums for discussion, audio and video streaming, learning analytics, and repositories for content and assessment questions. Most important is the advanced integration of Twitter and Facebook with this platform. Learners can access all the discussions via the Twitter or Facebook accounts and can post their queries and comments directly from these social media spaces. Thus, we are bringing mobile devices and MOOCs even closer as most Twitter and Facebook access in the developing world takes place using mobile devices. MOOCs are also likely to increasingly offer credentials of economic value, such as college credits, badges or certificates of competency. Then, if employees begin to consider such credentials for hiring and promotion decisions, we anticipate that participants will be more willing to pay fees to cover the cost of MOOC production, which will help ensure the sustainability of MOOCs in the future. An important component of effective MOOCs is the availability of course materials and learning resources as open educational resources or OER for short. Coal recognizes and promotes OER as central to its agenda for learning for sustainable development. Coal has adopted the widest definition of OER, describing them as materials offered freely and openly to use and adapt for teaching, learning, development and research. While OER are mainly shareable in digital format, both online and via offline formats, such as DVD or CD-ROM, Coal does not see them as just being synonymous with online resources, online learning or e-learning. Rather, in Coal's view, OER can be in printable formats. The term OER was first used at a UNESCO meeting in 2002. An early manifestation of OER was the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Open Courseway Initiative, in which teachers placed the lecture notes online for free. The UK Open University's Learn followed by placing existing self-instructional material in online format. Another step forward was the Virtual University for Small States of the Commonwealth or VASC, where capacity is built to develop courses collaboratively using free authoring tools. In 2007, leaders of the OER movement met in Cape Town, South Africa, to endorse what has become known as the Cape Town Declaration. They called on all educators to participate actively in this movement based on the belief that all taxpayer-funded resources should be OER. Coal and UNESCO have been working for several years now to promote the development and use of OER and jointly convene the World OER Congress in 2012. There are other technology trends that are influencing higher education too. Of these, developments in mobile learning, or M learning, are especially potent. In many developing countries, the availability of internet services may be very low, but the use of mobile devices is very high and growing. In fact, it's spreading so much that as Silicon India recently reported, using data from the ITU, the number of active cell phones will reach 7.3 million by 2014. In other words, there will be more in-use cell phones than there are people on the planet right now. But in other way, 80% of the world's population will be accessing the internet via the phone device. This has implications for the use of mobile phones for learning in higher education. In a survey of mobile phone learners completed in 2012, noted the following. 100% would complete more training in the mobile format. 99% believed the format and presentation would enhance their learning. 75% praised the convenience and time management benefits, while 45% spent more time in training with no loss in compensation. The key question, will higher education institutions use this trend to increase access to learning, identify different teaching methods, and develop quality content for this platform? Globally, as labour markets respond to rapidly changing economies and just as rapidly changing needs and expectations of society, so the pressure is mounting on higher education to keep up. Technology is at once opening doors to more extensive opportunities for many more people seeking knowledge and skills development, and driving significant changes in both teaching and the learning processes. We also see technology reshaping the form of higher education institutions. Developments such as MOOCs, OER, and mobile phones offer major avenues for addressing the needs of citizens in every nation to obtain high quality learning opportunities that are either free or at a very reduced cost. The outcome is clear. Global equity in access to learning. All of these factors have implications for higher education institutions in both developing and developed countries. Across Southern Africa, institutions like those present have been analysing the changing education environment and developing strategies to respond to it. I would like to conclude with a few points on why the technology-enabled changes I have outlined should be positively embraced. The changes are inevitable and therefore it would be important to understand how to turn the challenge into opportunities. This requires gathering data, doing careful analysis, and developing strategies. Higher education institutions have unique opportunities to engage in partnership with industry, government, NGOs, and other bodies to better understand the needs of learners within the economy and society. Technology offers many ways to improve teaching, increase independent learning by students, and widen access to global resources, five MOOCs, OER, etc. Perhaps most important of all, though, it offers a means for a greater number of people wherever they are in the world to gain the skills and knowledge they need to live productive, satisfying, and meaningful lives. Thank you.