Connecting schools in some of the world’s most remote communities means facing a range of obstacles: a lack of digital infrastructure, unreliable electricity, challenging terrain and high costs, among others. For governments, limited financial resources and national debt often add further strain. Addressing the sustainability of finance solutions for school infrastructure is a complex challenge. Giga’s mission to connect every school to the internet by 2030 requires putting together these many pieces of a “connectivity puzzle”. This includes solutions provided by governments, industry as well as innovative entrepreneurial business models.
Which is why Giga joined with Open Geneva’s talented community, seeking the bright ideas of the Swiss public, private and academic ecosystem to address the digital connectivity gap and respond to this challenge for the Sustainable Finance Hackathon: “Financing Digital Infrastructure for Schools: Overcoming Risk to Unlock Opportunity.”
This challenge called for creative thinking on how projects are financed. After intensive brainstorming, they emerged with an innovative and engaging approach, which you can see here in the following video.