A recent announcement of the Cape Town Open Education Declaration http://www.capetowndeclaration.org/ in South Africa demonstrates that the open education movement is making its way into educational sectors across the world, including developing countries. However, the multi-faceted aspects of access, quality and innovation in education remain challenges that redirect current research agendas. Issues relating to the (a) reliability of access to technological systems, and, (b) relevance to established cultural and pedagogical practices are introducing challenges in the uptake of Open Educational Resources (OER), forcing a re-think of current e-learning agendas in higher education. This paper examines questions that emerge when academic staff within a South African institution is recruited to use free content and tools, made available through the OpenLearn system of the Open University, United Kingdom.