Connected For Hope: Bridging the Digital Divide in Kenya’s Kakuma Camp
17-year-old Darlene Vakoko is a Congolese refugee, she lives in a small brick walled house with corrugated iron sheets. Along with her parents and her younger brother, she fled the ravages of the armed conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo seeking the relative peace and stability of the Kakuma refugee camp in northern Kenya.
International Day of The Girl 2025: “Offline by Design, Online by Right”
To mark International Day of the Girl Child 2025 on October 11, Evoca Foundation – together with Giga, a UNICEF and International Telecommunications Union (ITU) initiative – is shining a light on this urgent issue. A new animated film, “Close the Gap,” brings to life the stories of connection and disconnection: the possibilities that open when girls are online, and the inequities that persist when they are not.
The Giga Q&A With Mea Thompson, Unconnected.org
In this interview, Mea Thompson shares her insights as Co-Founder and Chief Commercial Officer of unconnected.org, a global non-profit bridging the digital divide through sustainable connectivity in underserved communities worldwide. She brings 15 years of experience in telecom and international development to her work.
The Regional Government of Catalonia Reaffirms Support to UNICEF and Giga to Help Connect Every School to the Internet by 2030
UNICEF and Giga welcome the Regional Government of Catalonia’s commitment to strengthen collaboration on child protection and digital inclusion.
Giga Announces the Accelerator Programme To Bring Online Learning to Unconnected Schools
Giga, the global joint initiative between the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) supporting governments to connect every school to the Internet by 2030, has officially launched the Giga Accelerator: A five-month programme designed to identify, fund and scale digital connectivity products for underserved and unserved schools around the world.
The Giga Q&A with Ben Roberts, Giga
Mei Lin Fung is Chair and Co-Founder of the People Centered Internet, begun in 2015 (with Vint Cerf, often called “a father of the internet”), which works to create a more equitable digital world. In this interview, she said it is time to shift the conversation from access to school to its impact. “These are the stories that need to be told—and the data that needs to be seen,” she says.
From Vaccines To Bandwidth: How UNICEF Supply Uses Procurement To Slash School Internet Costs By 60 Percent
Giga, the global initiative to connect every school to the internet, is helping governments to cut connectivity costs by up to 60 percent—using strategies from the playbook of Gavi, the vaccine alliance.
Geneva Becomes Global Hub for School Connectivity with Inauguration of Giga Connectivity Centre
Giga, the ITU-UNICEF initiative supporting governments to connect every school to the Internet by 2030, officially inaugurated its Giga Connectivity Centre today in Geneva, Switzerland.
Factbox – Why UNICEF Supply Bundles Tech to Connect Schools
To connect every school to the internet, Giga supports technologic agnostic bidding processes which are open to all companies and consortia. This helps the procurement process to deliver cost-effective, scalable solutions even in the remotest areas.
Powering Change: How Procurement-Driven Solarization Is Transforming Zimbabwe’s Classrooms
Some 60 percent of Zimbabwe’s schools cannot access reliable electricity and this might once have prevented them from connecting to the internet.
Encadré – exemples de baisse des tarifs internet dans les écoles africaines avec le soutien de l’Unicef Supply
Depuis le lancement de l’initiative Giga en 2019, l’UNICEF a constaté que les stratégies d’approvisionnement groupé permettent de réduire considérablement les coûts de la connectivité scolaire — qu’il s’agisse des frais d’installation initiaux (CAPEX) ou des coûts récurrents d’accès à Internet (OPEX) — de l’ordre de 30 à 60 %.
FACTBOX – UNICEF SUPPLY EXAMPLES OF INTERNET PRICE DROPS IN AFRICAN SCHOOLS
Since launching the Giga initiative in 2019, UNICEF has found that bulk procurement strategies can reduce the cost of school connectivity—both initial connection (CAPEX) and ongoing internet access (OPEX)—by 30 to 60 percent.