Black Lives Education Matters Now

Engineer Tororiro Isaac Chaza PMP, SMC [email protected] 

This is a piece motivated by the cry of the late George Floyd, “I can’t breathe,” the same cry of an African child whose prospects of education are diminishing, more so with Covid19 induced school closures. The solutions to this dilemma lie within Africa, which is 1.3 billion people, a source of human capital and a massive market for African solutions. If we do not find the solutions now, we will look back in 2030 and still chant “black lives matter!” Yet we will be the ones to blame for failing to educate a whole generation.

 The United Nations 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are not possible without Information and Communication Technology (ICT) infrastructure. One of the goals is “Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all” https://sdgs.un.org/goals/goal4. UN accedes that the progress towards “inclusive and equitable quality education” is too slow, and “200 million children will still be out of school in 2030.”

 Furthermore, the already fragile education system in African countries has now been compounded by the advent of Covid19. UNESCO gives some telling statistics on the effect of Covid19 school closures, thus the number of school children affected by the Covid19 school closures is 1,1 billion worldwide. That translates to 14% of the world population out of education, https://en.unesco.org/covid19/educationresponse.

 It gets worse when you isolate Africa. A rough calculation from a sample of African countries gives an average of 25% of the African population affected by Covid19 school closures. This roughly translates to about 370 million school children affected. Zimbabwe alone is given as 4.1 million leaners affected, the majority being in rural areas. These are seriously shocking figures for Africa.

 In Zimbabwe for example, a school child in rural Kitsiyatota, Mashonaland Central Province, or Mphoengs, Matebeleland South Province, is today struggling to access learning material because firstly, her/his school has inadequate access to ICT infrastructure and devices. Secondly, he/she does not own a home computer or mobile device. The school child normally travels long distances to and from school. School closures due to Civid19, however necessary, compound the situation resulting in a widening ‘digital divide’.

 In Zimbabwe, the Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education (MiPSE, together with the Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation (ZBC) and UNICEF have instituted radio lessons in an attempt to proffer stop-gap solutions to the school closures. This is a good move but grossly inadequate. For a person like me, whose learning styles are visual, physical and logical, I would find it difficult to comprehend Pythagoras and other mathematical and scientific theorems by a simply auditory style.

 What other solutions are required then? Mine is not to proffer the solutions but to stage a few notional scenarios so as to motivate the younger engineers, innovators and sponsors to critique and come up with the solutions.

 Envisage a scenario in a rural setting in Kitsiyatota, where access to ICT infrastructure is poor and expensive now. Children have to walk long distances everyday to the school edifice to be in a crowded classroom with even scarce textbooks. They walk back home the same long distances and then do their homework by candlelight.

 The solution could be a form of hybrid elearning plus time-limited face-to-face classroom attendance. This would be possible if the children have access to simple, reliable and affordable tablets or computer screens. ICT engineers can design and develop systems for the rural schools infrastructure for access to mobile network bandwidth, satellite bandwidth, even point-to-point or point-to-multipoint digital mini-link microwave systems. The school can download all the educational material they want at low cost, probably zero-rated or subsidized tariff, and the school child can come and download each time he/she attends the face-to-face sessions.

In another scenario, the ICT infrastructure for education can be implemented at village nodes/hubs rather than the far away schools. For example, there are plenty dormant TV satellite dishes and decoders in urban areas. If the satellite services are reassigned and/or modified for educational purposes, the decoders and dishes can be reused for rural education hubs/nodes. I am even certain that the satellite service providers can make the bandwidth and decoder costs very affordable for the good cause of educating black lives.

 The nodes/hubs can be under the supervision of the main schools and the teacher is the ones who will do the travelling instead of the kids. A simple motorbike will do for the teacher. The teacher can be equipped with a simple laptop device and a mini projector. The concept of a visiting teacher is similar to the Agricultural Extension (Agritex) officer in Zimbabwe who uses a motorbike to visit rural farmers for in-situ agricultural training and advisory services. Recently Agritex received a delivery of 5,000 bikes from the government.

 Teachers will have to be upskilled for digital aptitude. Can you also imagine the amount of energy that the Kitsiyatota and Mphoengs kids will preserve by not walking the long distances everyday? Sport would have to be reorganized at hub level also.

 The next question is the availability of affordable tablets or TV screens and the power. There are currently organizations that are manufacturing and promoting very affordable computers for education on the market, say for less than US$100. We can prioritise acquisition of such technology. I am also certain that we can utilize affordable solar kits to harness the abundant 8+ hours/day of sunlight in Kitsiyatota and Mphoengs.

 If “Black Lives Matter,” then surely education for the Kitsiyatota and Mphoengs school children is a priority. Let us act now and stave off a catastrophe. I am open to any suggestions for a pilot project.