UNICEF is requesting information from internet connectivity companies to accelerate school connectivity in Africa.
Despite growing evidence of the benefits of digital connectivity on education quality and economic growth, there are still 2.2 billion children who lack internet access at home, and half of the world’s estimated 6 million schools remain offline. According to the ITU, this digital divide is even more pronounced in Africa where only 37% of the population uses the internet, and internet costs are five times higher than the global average.
Ensuring that every school has meaningful access to the internet is a priority for UNICEF as part of its mission to help children meet their basic education needs and expand their opportunities to reach their full potential. For this reason, UNICEF is exploring entering non-exclusive Long-Term Arrangements (LTAs) with one or multiple vendors for the provision of end-to-end connectivity solutions for schools. UNICEF would use those LTAs to ‘broker’ contractual relationships with governments for the provision of internet connectivity to thousands of schools.
The objective of the current RFI is to start collecting the information that UNICEF will use to design those LTAs. The RFI focuses on understanding the existing capabilities of internet providers to connect schools at scale in Africa, as well as refining the list of technical requirements for connecting schools.
The scope of this RFI is the connectivity of schools in Africa. However, UNICEF is considering extending the scope to other facilities such as health clinics and community centres, as well as other world regions.