Proposal for a platform for the continuity of distance learning in African schools and universities at the end of the politico-military crisis in the face of covid-19: case of the Central African Republic

Following the perpetual political-military crises, most of the rural areas of the Central African Republic (CAR) are occupied by armed groups. This leads to human insecurity in these areas. Children, adolescents, and youth are out of school. Primary and secondary school teachers are unable to travel to unsafe areas. Due to the problem of human insecurity in rural areas and especially poverty in several rural areas of CAR, parents are unable to finance the education of their children who have taken the baccalaureate exams to travel to the capital Bangui to study at Bangui University alone. In this article, we propose a platform for the continuity of educational activities in the Central African Republic. Our initially proposed platform solution allows the creation of a distance primary and secondary school in bimodal mode in the rural areas of the CAR. In a second step, it allows the creation of a complete distance university training coupled with traditional education for young people from all rural areas of the Central African Republic. This platform has been tested at the Higher Institute of Technology (Department of Computer Science and Telecommunications) and the Faculty of Science of the University of Bangui and has enabled the partial resumption of pedagogical activities in these institutions. It has been applied in the field of STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) and can be extended to other disciplines. Access to resources is efficient thanks to the coupling of the WireGuard VPN server and the Apache Guacamole server which is a gateway using standard protocols via a browser. It also uses VXLAN technology which moves the WireGuard VPN server subnet from OSI Layer 3 to Layer 2 and allows the organization of practical work that requires being in the same local subnet. Access to this platform provides learners in the Central African Republic with a complete and secure distance learning environment for courses, assignments and tutorials.