Leaving no learner behind: Closing the digital divide in Africa is more important than ever — Alliance for Affordable Internet

As the Covid19 crisis continues to expose our extreme inequalities, children and youth are among the most vulnerable. This is especially so given the disparate impact due to the lack of access to internet connectivity in many homes which threatens educational goals and aspirations. School closures continue to widen the education gap with a disparate impact on children and youth from poor, rural and/or lower socioeconomic backgrounds as well as threaten to undo achievements made today in advancing schooling for girls.

According to the UNESCO Institute of Statistics Data, over 91% of the world’s student population is affected by the national and/or local school closures due to this pandemic. In Africa, the continent with the youngest population, this could have a devastating impact, especially when juxtaposed with existing low rates of internet access and overall lack of affordability for the majority of its citizens.

Despite efforts such as the UNESCO-led #LearningNeverStops initiative, which recently received an endorsement from the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC), the reality is that for millions of learners — especially those in public schools and/or from poor, rural communities who are digitally excluded and therefore cannot take full advantage of these “distant learning” opportunities — they run the risk of being left behind once again.

The challenge of meeting learners’ needs during the Covid19 related lockdowns must not be left up to education departments alone. Rather it must be addressed through an integrated approach at the national level as part of overall economic turnaround plans. Government and the private sector as well as civil society must unite in an effort to close the digital divides in our society and build a truly inclusive economy. The Web Foundation and the Alliance for Affordable Internet (A4AI) have published a Policy Brief on Internet Access and Affordability which recommends governments, companies, and civil society to take urgent actions to bring as many people online as possible during this global emergency.

For African countries, the success of initiatives such as the #LearningNeverStops campaign, as well as other efforts to mitigate the disruption to education and economic plans requires a commitment to the following:

As more learners stay home and citizens are called upon to practice social distancing in order to slow down the rate of Covid-19 infections — which is important to our safety and public health, access to affordable Internet becomes central to our survival, and economic stability.

We must ensure all learners have access to the Internet.

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Originally published at https://a4ai.org on April 22, 2020.