Rwanda plans to increase the Internet coverage rate of public secondary schools to 62% this year. The ultimate goal is to achieve universal Internet connectivity by 2024. Out of 1,459 public secondary schools, 724 are already connected to the Internet, of which 678 are connected to 4G.
According to the Rwanda Education Committee (REB), the current Internet coverage rate of public secondary schools is 52%. This year, it is planned to increase this rate to 62%. By 2024, the government that wants to reach a rate of 100% should invest the sum of 4.8 billion Rwandan francs ($ 5 million).
In an interview granted on July 13, 2020 to the information site The New Times , Christine Niyizamwiyitira, the ICT manager in the education department of REB, indicates that the achievement of universal Internet connectivity in public secondary schools is in line with the National Transformation Strategy (NST1) initiated in 2017, when the Internet access rate at school was only 12%. Internet connectivity, she said, will help students, among other things, improve their academic performance, as they will have easier access to academic content online.
“The Giga initiative, which Rwanda recently launched as a pilot country, will also help accelerate the goal” of universal Internet connectivity in public secondary schools, added REB. The project, the result of a collaboration between the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), with the aim of providing connectivity to all schools in the world by 2030, was launched in 2019.
Currently, there are 1,459 public secondary schools. 724 are connected to the Internet. Among them, 678 schools are connected to 4G. Christine Niyizamwiyitira explains that the state plans to “connect most of the remaining schools to 4G in order to reduce costs”.
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