Rwanda Education Board (REB) has announced that it targets to reach 62 percent internet connectivity among secondary public schools this fiscal year, from the current 52 percent. According to REB, the target is in line with the National Strategy for Transformation (NST1) that targets to reach universal internet connectivity in public schools by 2024. In 2017, when NST1 kicked off, Rwanda’s internet connectivity in public secondary schools was at 12 percent only. “We target to reach 62 percent of internet connectivity in secondary public schools within this fiscal year 2020-2021,” Christine Niyizamwiyitira, Head of ICT in Education department at REB told The New Times on Monday, July 13. The internet connectivity, according to REB, will among others help students to improve their performance as they will easily access academic content online. Niyizamwiyitira also noted that “Giga Initiative that Rwanda recently embarked on as a lead country will help speed up the target.’’ The initiative was launched in 2019 by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), with an aim to provide connectivity to every school in the world by 2030. So far, there are 1,459 public and government-aided secondary schools of which 724 are connected to the internet. Of these, 678 schools are connected to 4G. The target to reach 100 percent connectivity in public schools by 2024, said Niyizamwitiyira, will cost an estimated Rwf 4.8 billion. “For us to connect the outstanding 42 percent, we estimate a cost of Rwf 4.8 billion. We are planning to connect most of the remaining schools to 4G in bid to reduce the costs,” she added. Rwanda is one of African countries that are putting efforts in equipping schools with digital infrastructures in bid to revolutionize education into an ICT-based sector. In 2016, the Ministry of Education challenged stakeholders in the education sector to fast-track a new model dubbed “Smart Classroom”, an initiative aimed at digitising education from a paper-based system to a digital-driven sector. In the first quarter of 2019, it was announced that over 711 schools have implemented the “Smart Classroom” policy. It also sought to equip schools with computers and access to the internet. In 2008, the Government also launched One Laptop per Child- an initiative aimed at enabling all primary school children to own computers.
