Currently, two-thirds of children and young people worldwide do not have an Internet connection at home and at least 31 per cent of all school children cannot be reached by remote learning programs.

Differences in access to the Internet are larger between wealthy and poor nations; among children and young people, only 6% cent of those in low-income countries have Internet access at home, compared to 87% in high-income countries.

With Giga we want to bridge the digital divide in education. We believe that reliable connectivity is fundamental to creating effective 21^st century learning environments. And we want to make sure this is available to every child and every young person on the planet.

Lack of connectivity in Africa is a big challenge. Of the 3.7 billion people currently unconnected, 960 million live in Africa.

These individuals are excluded from that vast store of information and opportunity that could be transformational to their lives.

In Africa, 9 out of 10 school-age children – aged 3 to 17 years old – do not have Internet access at home (How Many Children and Youth Have Internet Access at Home. ITU/UNICEF Report, December 2020.), and so the digital divide is perpetuating cycles of inequality and poverty. Children and young people on the continent are falling further behind their peers and left without opportunities to change their futures and those of the people in their communities.

Access to reliable and affordable electricity also remains a major constraint when bringing sustainable connectivity solutions to schools, a challenge that Giga takes very seriously in its ongoing pilots on the African Continent.

A big challenge we have when trying to bridge the digital divide in education is that, currently, we do not know how many schools there are in the world.

We also don’t know how many of those are connected to the Internet or whether that connection is sufficient for high-quality online learning.

Through Giga, we want to find answers and solutions to these questions in order to explore, with partners, the innovative ways to connect them.

Giga uses space technologies, satellite imagery, artificial intelligence, and machine learning to map schools and their connectivity, including those in hard to reach and very remote areas.

The models developed by Giga combine satellite imagery and ITU infrastructure mapping data and use AI models to help figure out with more precision what constitutes a school and what its coordinates are. Then, we use Machine Learning technology, aggregate all these pieces of data together, and get a better understanding of the connectivity gaps.

But Giga’s role does not stop there. Knowing the location of schools and their connectivity status is only the first step. In partnership with governments and industry leaders, Giga also helps model the optimal connectivity solutions and the potential financial mechanisms to provide schools with reliable, good quality and sustainable connectivity. Giga also serves as a platform, linking partners and initiatives, to ensure that we provide learners with the relevant digital skills, services and solutions to fully enhance their potential.