Access to Internet would shape educational discourse in Uganda in the face of coronavirus and beyond.
Internet is a basic human right according to the United nations declaration. This right is premised on the extension of human freedom of speech and access to information. In Uganda, which is a signatory to the UN statutes, the enjoyment of this right is basically a privilege of the urban dwellers…Majority of her population are left out.
My interest here is to talk about the possibility of extending this right to all people and to all educational institutions and their ministers in view of a scenario like the covid-19 crisis. This virus has disrupted educational and other sector programs and activities all over the world. In Uganda alone, over 17 million pupils and students excluding their teachers are sitting back home. Perhaps 10% or less of these learners will get the opportunity through their able teachers and families to access learning platforms on social media and educational portals using internet. What do you think of the remaining majority percentage?
What if defeating the pandemic remains a more than one-month battle? What if some teachers cross over to other fields or die (God forbid)? Internet would have been the most viable means of ensuring continuous teacher and learner engagement.
Currently many educationists in developed countries, in educational organizations including some of our own brothers in the developing countries’ cave have seriously resorted or intensified on their usage of internet as a basic human right to continue educating their learners.
But what has the ministry of education in Uganda done so far? As long as the government continues to lug behind or follow behind her educational partners without taking drastic moves, the dream of quality education and the attainment of the 4th sustainable goal will remain a mystery.
In countries like Kenya, Tanzania Zambia among others through the partnership of Internet.org and Facebook have basic free internet and they are already leveraging on this right to continuously engage with their learners.
In 2016, the former ICT minister Honourable Frank Tumwebaze declared free access of internet to Kampala ,this was a commendable initiative. The service encountered enormous numbers of users and it developed system breakdown besides the infamous over the top tax (OTT) which was introduced a couple of months ago. Such setbacks don’t limit the celebration of this right but also fail different economic activities that rely heavily on the availability stable and affordable internet.
“ internet access is no luxury but instead a moral human right everyone should have unmonitored and uncensored access to this global medium-provided free of charge for those unable to afford it” said Dr. Merten Reglitz of Birmingham University. I want to halt my understanding of the other side of the coin but press on for the scalability of this right in Uganda. In response to United nations’ echo and those of lecturers like Dr, Merten, an Indian state of Kerala despite the fact that it’s also among the zonal developing countries embarked on a massive project of rolling out free internet to every household. It fully embraced the internet as a basic human right by 2019. This was a locally funded arrangement.
Technology is the way to go, we should be intentional in investing in its infrastructures without hesitations and education should be given the first priority. If we don’t purpose to do this, the next two generations will be as less innovative and full of mediocrity as the passing generation yet incredible enormous opportunities to transform this country and the world loom in making every available resource like internet to access and offer quality education to all .“If coronavirus does not kill us, it will leave us smarter” Daniel Kalinaki of the daily monitor said.
