Pan-African operator Airtel has announced that it has partnered with child-welfare-focused NGO UNICEF under UNICEF’s Reimagine Education initiative and will be connecting 620 primary schools in Nigeria to digital learning in the coming three months.
This partnership, say the two groups, is expected to benefit 300,000 students across the country with access to the internet and devices.
In the first year of the five-year partnership, Airtel and UNICEF say they will provide all the resources for digital learning to the 620 identified schools including reliable broadband connectivity and free access to a world-class curriculum through the Nigeria Learning Passport (NLP).
NLP, developed by Nigeria’s Federal Ministry of Education, along with UNICEF and Microsoft, is an e-learning platform with online and offline capability that enables continuous access to quality education.
Twenty schools in Lagos and Kano will be connected in December 2022, while the connection of the remaining 600 schools will be concluded before the end of February 2023.
Airtel says its support will benefit students with uninterrupted access to quality learning materials. Airtel is also providing free access for any Airtel subscriber to Youth Agency Market Place (YOMA), a UNICEF digital platform for skilling, upskilling and encouraging young people’s engagement. Currently YOMA has 115,000 users in Nigeria. This number is expected to grow with Airtel support, especially for young people living in hard-to-reach areas with low or no access to data or connectivity.
The Reimagine Education project is a five-year partnership between Airtel and UNICEF to help accelerate the roll-out of digital learning by connecting schools to the internet and ensuring free access to learning platforms across 13 countries.
