Mary Nnah
Fostering digital equity in rural communities requires putting systems and structures in place to strengthen the ability of communities to understand, know how to use and drive technology and its outcomes to solve local problems and support local innovation.
Therefore, it has become pertinent, especially on this path to the new normal for the focus to be on digital equity, which will include prioritising public infrastructure investments, public-private partnerships, deep community engagement and multi stakeholders consultations which are significantly pivotal towards deploying the right processes and policies to optimise the use of technology for educational purposes, even in the most remote communities.
This and many more were the highlights of the series of Regional Education Digital Equity Workshops organised by Aid for Rural Education Access Initiative (AREAi).
The initiative was part of activities to end months of community surveys, stakeholders’ consultations and grassroots engagement and information materials development within the Education Digital Equity Initiative funded by the United Kingdom’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office under the Prosperity Fund’s Digital Access Programme.
The regional roundtable events, held in four states including Kwara, Kano, Adamawa and Ebonyi states, provided the opportunity to facilitate exchange of new understanding on strategies and solutions to the challenges of education digital equity in rural communities and remote schools.
At the end of the event, over 10,000 copies of output materials including the Learning Manual for Students, Access Toolkit for Teachers and School Leaders and Policy Guide for Education Administrators were distributed to the event attendees as well as to the beneficiary states.
Speaking on the essence of the event, Chief Executive Director, AREAi, Prince Gideon Olanrewaju, stressed the need to leverage the contributions of all stakeholders to bridge the gap in education digital equity in rural communities and remote schools across the six geopolitical zones in Nigeria. The organisation also announced the launch of a series of initiatives which includes STEM training for girls and a digital skills training for teachers.
