The education ministry this week made startling revelations with regards to the effects of digital gaps on e-learning, especially in rural schools and remote communities across the country during the Covid-19 pandemic.
As widely expected, there exists a major digital divide between rural schools and their suburban and urban counterparts. The Communications Regulatory Authority of Namibia (CRAN) recently announced about 1 400 out of 1 800 schools, translating to 78% in the country, are without information and communication technology infrastructure.
CRAN CEO Emilia Nghikembua said the organisation commissioned a geographic information system analysis to identify gaps in connectivity for the provision of telecommunications services in the country.
The gap analysis also found that while population coverage stands at 89% for 3G and 79% for 4G, areas such as Kunene, Kavango East and Kavango West have coverage below 50%.
According to the regional education adviser for eastern and southern Africa at the United Nations International Children’s Fund (Unicef), Abhiyan Jung Rana, over 30 000 pupils in Namibia could not be traced after schools shut down due to the Covid-19 pandemic and the resultant lockdowns. These findings are not surprising.
In fact, director of adult education Mzingisi Gqwede told the four-day national conference on education a substantial number of adult learners have been forced to drop out of school because of challenges associated with a lack of e-learning.
Most of these learners from remote areas are unable to connect to computers and other devices as they simply lack electricity. Thus, when Covid struck, they were not able to continue with learning.
“Due to issues of connectivity and electricity, we were not able to reach with the materials to adult learners to continue learning during Covid. We were totally left out since 2020. We had to carry out a rationalised curriculum to say, teach only 70%, and then let them write exams. This affects what you do the next year. We still need to catch up on the 30% we didn’t do because they cannot continue without completing the curriculum,” he was quoted as saying this week.
This presents a huge problem for our education system, which is already facing a crisis of epic proportions.
Every child has the right to be in school and to access and complete, at all levels, an inclusive education programme.
As the saying goes, education remains and is the biggest equaliser.
Without meaningful education, we will not be able to generate a formidable human capital capable of benefiting individuals and societies, including rural development.
There is, therefore, an urgent need for those in power to realise that they are depriving the vulnerable and poor in our society the opportunity to excel academically.
The children of the poor are already facing serious problems at grassroots level, including a lack of trained teachers, inadequate education materials and poor infrastructure, which make learning difficult for many learners.
Even with a N$14.1 billion allocation over the medium-term expenditure framework, the education ministry is still unable to cater for all its needs, considering it has a wage bill of 40 000 staff members to service, while N$200 was allocated per pre-primary and primary learner and N$300 for a secondary learner.
Both education and infrastructure are important, and ideally investment in them should be balanced to help achieve some progress in this critical area.