The year 2022 was a big one for the Giga team, as UNICEF and ITU school initiative picked up momentum on tackling one of the most challenging, pervasive issues of our time – connecting schools to the internet by 2030 and every young person to information, opportunity, and choice.
Giga, a UNICEF-ITU initiative, works to connect every school in the world to the internet by 2030. Giga utilize as non-fungible tokens (NFTs) to build a decentralized and open-source database of schools worldwide.
More than two-thirds of the world’s children still don’t have access to the Internet. Without access to the Internet, children’s prospects for a better future are limited.
Giga, a joint initiative between UNICEF and ITU to connect all of the world’s schools to the internet by 2030, has partnered with the Ethereum Foundation and the Government of Rwanda to use staking to finance connectivity.
The Village of Zardaly sits high up in the most mountainous region of Kyrgyzstan in Central Asia. Every winter, the 200 inhabitants of Zardaly are cut off from the rest of the world when heavy snow covers the single trail into the village, leaving them entirely isolated.
Orateng Mothowamadi is a 15-year-old student at Tshwaragano Junior Secondary School in Maun and among 370,000 students who have benefitted from a connect the school initiative driven by the Government of Botswana in collaboration with UNICEF and Giga.
Giga and the Government of Uzbekistan are looking for local Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to implement an innovative, sustainable and scalable model in which schools act as ‘connectivity hubs’ and redistribute internet access to local communities within a 5-kilometer radius.
Today we are celebrating the International Day of Girls in ICTs, an annual event to help girls access the digital tools they need to thrive in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) careers. This year’s theme of ‘Access and Safety’ is closely linked to Giga’s mission to give every child the chance to access the Internet and digital environment in a safe way.
In coordination with UNICEF Honduras and the Ministry of Education, Giga has launched a pilot project to connect 24 public schools in 7 departments of Honduras to the Internet. Telecommunications company América Móvil (Claro) will provide the Internet connectivity for an initial two-year period.
In collaboration with the Government of Sierra Leone, Giga has launched a second Request for Proposals (RFP) to select suppliers to enter a Long-Term Agreement (LTA) for the provision of internet connectivity services to public schools to increase access to digital learning.