by Xinhua writers Ding Lei, Li Hualing
Nairobi, July 26 (Xinhua) -- On a sunny Saturday afternoon, laughter of adolescents resounded through a black-and-white three-floor building dubbed Konnect Hub in Githurai 44, a middle-to-low-income community on the outskirts of Kenya's capital city Nairobi.
"We don't have summer here," said Levin Chama, an 11-year-old boy, sounding genuinely bewildered. A bunch of children grinned with delight on hearing those words from their classmate.
Chama was answering the question through video conferencing asked by Laura Klein, a German college student thousands of miles away, about what Kenyans like to do in summer, after she shared how a German family usually spends their summer time.
It was an eye-opening class during which volunteer teachers from all over the world gave the East African nation's children a virtual tour of their home countries, offering them remote access to experiencing the culture of a country they may have never heard about.
Such a distance learning program happens every week at Konnect Hub since this April. The Konnect School, an initiative by Chinese-invested Kenyan Internet service provider Ahadi Wireless Limited, is the first digital learning environment in Githurai region.
Under the Konnect School program, children aged between five and 15 years, take various online classes including literature, mathematics, culture and arts.
"I like this kind of distance learning. It is very different from going to classes at school. I have learned a lot about other countries," Chama told Xinhua on Saturday.
Ann Kariuki, a 15-year-old highschool girl who signed up to the program after being referred from Chama's mother, said the Konnect sessions were amazing by showing her around the world. "It (Konnect School) really teaches us that if you really want to have a good life, you should really try hard."
Abhigail Xu, a Philippine teacher currently volunteering for Konnect School in Nairobi and teaching English as a second language, said having remote educational system like Konnect School in Kenya makes a big difference. "It's just a simple thing for me, but in the long run it'll be a very big thing for Kenyan kids' future," said Xu.
Zhou Tao, founder of Ahadi Wireless Limited, told Xinhua that his aim is to build the largest last-mile community-based broadband network in Africa by delivering affordable Internet services to help every child enjoy distance education.
When the COVID-19 pandemic reached Kenya in March 2020, schools had been closed to curb the spread of the disease. The country adopted measures to move classes online to help children and youth continue their education at home.
Zhou said low and middle income families account for some 80 percent of Nairobi's population. Children from those underprivileged families were more likely to be excluded from online learning because they could not afford sufficient Internet.
Internet access in Africa has grown rapidly in recent years, but access rates are still well behind the rest of the world as affordability of the service remains a major barrier to the uptake.
According to a report by the International Telecommunications Union, only 28 percent of urban households in Africa had access to the Internet at home in 2019, well below the global average of 72 percent. The report also said that at the end of 2019, less than 30 percent of population in Africa was using the Internet, compared with the proportion of 51 percent worldwide.
To help address the digital technology divide on the continent, Zhou launched Konnect project in early 2020 with a target market of middle-to-low-income residents struggling to afford the costs of Internet services despite their desire to be part of the ever-expanding digital world.
Users of Konnect pay 20 Kenyan shillings (0.18 U.S. dollars) per hour and between 9.21 USD and 18.43 USD monthly to access the Internet service with a high speed of up to 8 megabits per second per device.
By far, Konnect, in partnership with China Telecom (Kenya) Limited, has registered more than 65,000 users in densely-populated communities in Nairobi. "We hope to promote the affordable Internet services to as many low- and middle-income families in Africa as possible, so that Africa can better connect with the rest of the world," said Zhou during an interview with Xinhua.
The internet entrepreneur said Konnect is not just providing affordable Internet but building a basic service with Internet as a tool to promote opportunities on top of the infrastructure. Zhou hopes to expand the Konnect project into other African countries such as Uganda, Ghana and Zambia in the near future. Enditem