Rwanda was chosen to lead the rest of Africa in implementing the Giga Project, a project of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), which aims to link every school to the internet.
The initiative, launched in 2019, Giga sets the goal of providing connectivity to every school in the world where some 3.6 billion people worldwide are estimated to have no access to the Internet.
The Giga initiative, initiated by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and UNICEF, is planned to link each school to the Internet by 2030, based on four pillars of Mapping, Connect, Finance, and Empower.
For example , when it comes to financing, Giga will work with governments and advise them on building affordable and sustainable country-specific finance and delivery models, subsidizing the costs of creating the market, and encouraging private sector investment.
Doreen Bogdan-Martin, ITU Director, Telecommunications Development Bureau, said Rwanda’s choice was right and appropriate in implementing ICT-based policies and access which shaped the digital era based on its track record.
“I look forward to working closely with Paul Kagame and Paula Musoni to provide every young person in the region with the information and the skills they need to shape the future they want in the digital era,” Bogdan-Martin said on June 5.
Rwanda’s ICT and Innovation Minister Paula Ingabire said the Giga initiative is aligned with Rwanda’s vision of becoming a knowledge-based economy.
This vision is based on the ability to provide easy access to education, a priority government has undertaken to connect and equip all schools with the internet with the necessary tools and skills.
“Such collaborations are needed more than ever to accelerate connectivity rollout and easy, affordable access to learning opportunities for our children,” Ingabire said.
Rwanda managed to lay out 7,000 kilometers of fiber optic backbone, rolling out 96 per cent of 4 G internet as part of basic infrastructure to connect all schools to the internet.
Before schools were closed due to the spread of coronavirus (Covid-19) to Rwanda, improving access to eLearning was one of the Government’s ambitions to become a technology hub in the East African region.
To achieve this goal, Rwanda launched an educational policy ICT involving providing internet and child-based computer distribution under One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) program where teachers can digitally enter lessons on the eLearning website for pupils to review at home.
The Government distributed more than 250,000 OLPCs in 1,624 schools out of the targeted 2,909 through the Rwanda Education Board (REB)
ITU has said in a related development that Kazakhstan will also lead the Central Asian Giga Regional initiative.
