Pan-African technology group Liquid Intelligent Technologies has partnered with the United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef) to support the Giga initiative’s ambitions of connecting every school to the Internet.
Liquid will share anonymised data to support the work of Giga, which was founded by Unicef and the International Telecommunication Union in 2019, to map the location and connectivity status of schools in Africa.
The partnership will initially focus on Kenya, with plans to incorporate other Liquid markets over time, including South Africa, Zambia, Botswana, Tanzania, Uganda, Zimbabwe and Rwanda.
Liquid will share information with Giga about schools’ proximity to telecommunications infrastructure and help develop a connectivity monitoring platform, which will provide a basis for better-targeted investment to connect schools, including in hard-to-reach areas.
“This partnership with Liquid will allow our Giga team to gain a deeper understanding of the connectivity landscape in Kenya and across Africa,” says Unicef office of innovation director Thomas Davin.
“That knowledge will help Unicef to get more schools online.”