Giga

High Hopes in Honduras

Connect, Stories /

In the farming community of Villanueva, Honduras, famous for its sugarcane, businesses are planting the seeds of a digital future by paying for the internet connection in a local school. Thanks to their support, students like Samantha, 10, are experiencing online learning for the first time.

“Using a tablet in class, I’m learning to add, multiply and read stories very fast with videos and interactive courses,” she said. “Technology is in our school now.”

The school in Villanueva is one of 40 that were connected with the help of Giga, the ITU-UNICEF initiative that seeks to connect every school in the world to the internet by 2030. Giga’s work in Honduras provides a useful example of one way to finance school connectivity amid limited public funding: the community contribution model.

This model enables local businesses to piggyback on a school’s internet access, opening up the online distribution of products and services. With their increased profits, the businesses pay the monthly connection fee directly to the internet service provider (ISP). 

The result, in theory, is a virtuous circle in which a connected school boosts learning and opportunity for students as well as economic growth for the community.

Giga selected the schools in the pilot project using UNICEF’s mapping and ITU’s infrastructure modeling to locate their proximity to fiber optic service. 

 (©UNICEF/Honduras/2023)

Setting Up the Model

The decision to pursue the community cooperation model was made by Giga based on a study of financing options with Boston Consulting Group, the knowledge partner, called “Meaningful school connectivity: An assessment of sustainable business models.”

 A tradition of cooperativism in Honduras, typically in the agricultural sector, played an important part in the decision. As ITU noted in a subsequent 2022 study on competitiveness in the Honduran internet market, this experience in community organizing can “take an active part in the implementation and operation of internet services.”

 “We built a management team in each school with principals and teachers, key members of the community, cooperatives and councils,” said Daniel Contreras, UNICEF’s country representative in Honduras. “These management teams designed a plan to integrate local businesses.”

Twenty months later, the results of the project underscore its potential.

 Small businesses, ranging from restaurants to school supplies, have succeeded in paying for the internet connection in 40 per cent of the original cohort. Another 15 per cent with a community model in place have struggled and lost service, but plan to reconnect in the coming months. Of the remaining schools, 25 per cent now receive public funding, while 20 per cent are not connected at all.  Efforts are underway to find public or private funding to add them to the network.

 Overall, community business is responsible for the largest percentage of sustained connectivity for the 40 schools. The total number connected could reach 80 per cent, counting those with public support and providing the 15 percent that fell behind in payments can regain access.

 

(©UNICEF/Honduras/2023)

Much-Needed Progress
These largely positive results are a sign of success against tall odds in Honduras, a country of 10 million with relatively high levels of poverty that is working to overcome decades of corruption, crime and unemployment.
 
“We have a lot of kids out of the educational system,” said Jaime Rodriguez, Vice Minister of Education in Honduras, “but if we don’t prepare the new generations for the change in technology, in science, the gap will get bigger each day.”  
 
Today, with political support at the top and guidance from Giga and other development entities, Honduras is taking its commitment to digital education into high gear.
 
In 2019 the Inter-American Development Bank (IADB) awarded Honduras a $44.7 million loan to support its digital agenda. But a combination of political instability and COVID-19 delayed implementation until early 2023.
 
Now, after a rebalancing in the loan, school connectivity will receive $10 million more, up to $19 million of the total. With those funds, the government plans to connect 2,000 schools this year, and is shooting for 10,000 schools by the end of 2026 — nearly half the total of the country’s 22,000 schools.
 
Enrique Iglesias Rodríguez, a telecom specialist at IADB, said the funding only goes towards connectivity. Consequently, in recognition that the educational goals of connectivity require learning devices and teacher training, the bank is trying to complement its funding with other initiatives.
 

 

(©UNICEF/Honduras/2023)

Rural Schools on Hold
IADB is targeting those schools with access to the fiber optic network rather than the rural, harder-to-reach schools.  In many cases, the latter are still without electricity, which the government is looking to address with solar power. Honduras has 8,000 schools without electricity.
 
The IADB considers the community-based business model a valid option for school connectivity precisely because of its economic development component.
 
“It can make a school viable that otherwise might not get connected because it would require constant public support,” he said.
 
To what extent the community cooperation model will be used in the newly connected schools remains to be seen, but the government recognizes the essential role it can play.
 
“If the parents participate in the school, they are part of the school. And this is a very good thing because we want the school be the centre of the community,” said Vice Minister Rodríguez.

 

New Telecom Law
Given the scale of its school connectivity needs, the Honduran government is looking to reconfigure its approach with a new telecommunications law — a decision prompted by a 2022 ITU study that recommended regulatory measures to increase competitiveness among ISPs to reach more unserved schools.
 
Other recommendations in the study covered increased funding for school connectivity, such as spectrum auctions and a new universal fund (USF) model based on best international practices. The previous USF system was cancelled by the government in 2022 along with other government trust funds, which were perceived as a source of corruption. 
 
Recently, the Honduras government commissioned ITU to prepare a draft law for the telecommunications sector, which ITU will present next year.
 
“One of the most important things we want to achieve with the new law is to help the small ISPs to flourish,” said Miguel Alcaine, ITU regional lead in Central America. “The small ones will have to buy the traffic from the big ones, but they can attend to the needs of local communities. That’s one of the main targets to close the gap. They can be privately owned or cooperatives, among other forms.”
 
Vice Minister Rodríguez believes Honduras can meet its goal of connecting 10,000 schools by the end of 2026.
 
“We are going to get there. We really appreciate the effort that Giga is doing to help us know how to connect schools, how to give opportunity to the new generation, the opportunity for the poorest people to have access to a new kind of education,” he said. “That is what we need.”
 
Watch the video below and learn more about the Honduran experience connecting schools using the community-based business model: