Inspired by vaccine market reforms, UNICEF and ITU’s Giga initiative is reshaping the procurement of internet connections for schools, using pooled procurement to cut costs while increasing speed and access.
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.
Launched in 2000, Gavi dramatically reduced the cost of childhood vaccines in low-income countries by aggregating demand, negotiating long-term agreements, and pushing for more transparency on prices. Its efforts brought down the price of the pentavalent vaccine by more than 80 percent, enabling over 822 million children to be vaccinated worldwide.
Now, Giga—a joint initiative by UNICEF and the International Telecommunication Union (ITU)—is applying those same principles to bridge the digital divide. Set up in 2019, Giga aims to connect every school in the world to the internet, upholding the rights of every child and enabling them to reach their full potential.
“In many ways, Giga is using Gavi’s model to close the connectivity gap,” said Jaime Archundia, Giga Procurement and Market Development Lead. “When you pool demand, increase transparency, and give suppliers a clear path to scale, then prices fall—and access opens up.”
Procurement as a Market Tool
Giga’s procurement strategy is a form of market-shaping—a concept pioneered in the vaccine sector—where tools like pooled procurement, standardized service levels, and long-term contracts are used not just to buy services, but to reshape markets for affordability, scale, and quality.
Giga helps governments bundle school connectivity needs into large-scale, competitive tenders. In pilot projects so far, the tests have been dramatic. In Botswana, government-led procurement slashed school internet prices by as much as 93%. In Kenya, a similar process connected 609 schools at half the previous cost. And in Rwanda, competitive bidding cut bandwidth costs from USD 20 to USD 9 per Mbps.
The results mirror Gavi’s early breakthroughs: when governments shift from fragmented procurement to large bundles–national or even regional–they tend to get better prices and engagement from the suppliers.
A Data-Driven Model
Just like Gavi, Giga also relies on data to drive vital procurement decisions. GigaMaps, its mapping platform, has over 2.2 million school locations mapped across 140+ countries, using AI and satellite imagery. It maps the availability of electricity and internet in almost 500 thousand schools, as well as monitors in real-time the quality of the connectivity that schools receive.
That data enables governments to identify gaps, plan national rollouts, and negotiate from a position of strength. It also benefits the providers.
“This visibility reduces the risk for investors, allowing them to plan more accurately,” said Jaime Archundia.
Giga is also piloting real-time dashboards to benchmark pricing and service quality. Insights generated help to vital trust in the same way that Gavi did by publishing data on vaccine prices.
Tailored for Local Needs
Just as WHO introduced prequalification to assure vaccine quality, Giga is exploring ways to standardize technical requirements and service quality benchmarks for school connectivity—ensuring governments and donors can identify reliable, scalable solutions.
Both Gavi and Giga focus on context-specific solutions. While Gavi tailored cold chain logistics for every individual country, Giga helps governments and markets to choose the most viable method of connectivity–fiber, microwave, fixed wireless, or satellite, for example–depending on the geography and cost.
In Sierra Leone, bundled contracts brought solar electricity and microwave relays to remote areas as part of a Giga-led pilot project. In Zimbabwe, UNICEF has enabled off-grid connectivity by solarizing 154 schools so far, with even more in progress.
“Lack of grid electricity or infrastructure shouldn’t be a barrier,” said Jöelle Ayité, UNICEF’s Chief of Education in Zimbabwe. “By bundling connectivity with solar power and using competitive, large-scale procurement, we were able to attract suppliers who could deliver integrated solutions–bringing both internet and electricity to remote schools.”
Access to Vital Digital Skills
Giga targets the most marginalized. With half of the world’s 6 million schools still offline, the initiative is very focused on closing the digital gap, laying the foundations for more children to learn, gather vital digital skills, and connect their communities into the digital economy.
It also supports governments to work with the industry on financial sustainability. In countries like Uzbekistan, Kenya, and Rwanda, connected schools sell internet access to nearby communities, thus offsetting the costs of being connected.
UNICEF’s Procurement Power
In both digital and health sectors, fragmented demand drives up costs and discourages investment. Giga tackles this by aggregating demand—bundling school needs across districts or even countries—to send a strong, coordinated signal to suppliers.The key to Giga’s rapid scaling, however, may lie with the depth and strength of UNICEF’s expertise on procurement. One of the world’s largest and most trusted buyers, UNICEF procured US$5.2 billion worth of goods and services across 162 countries in 2023.
That credibility attracts private suppliers, multilateral development banks, and reduces the risks associated with large-scale school connectivity rollouts.
In Sierra Leone, for example, UNICEF helped the government to secure a US$ 5 million loan from the Islamic Development Bank for the first round of school connections. In Kenya, UNICEF supported the government in securing €11 million for school connectivity efforts. In other countries, Giga is working with the World Bank to earmark infrastructure budgets for schools.
It took over two decades for Gavi to institutionalize pooled procurement globally and close the immunization gap. Giga is still early in its journey, but the vaccine playbook offers a proven path: start with data, build standards, shape demand, and scale procurement strategically.
A Playbook That Delivers
Both Gavi and Giga show that–when paired with data, scale, and partnerships–strategic procurement can radically reshape the delivery of essential services.
For vaccines, that meant protecting millions of children from preventable diseases. For Giga, it could enable hundreds of millions of students to gain access to the internet, digital skills, and new opportunities.
The lesson, Jaime Archundia said, is clear: “Strategic procurement creates the systems and scale that open doors—to information, to education, and to opportunity.”