‘9 of each 10 South-Asian school children lack internet in homes’

Nine of each ten school-age children in South-Asian countries are yet to avail internet facility in their homes. The situation is similar to the countries in sub-Saharan Africa, says a new joint report by United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) and the International Telecommunication Union (ITU).

According to the report, two thirds of the world's school-age children – or 1.3 billion children aged 3 to 17 years old – do not have internet connection in their homes.

In the South Asian countries, a total of 449 million or 88% school-age children lack internet facility.  

The report, styled 'How Many Children and Youth Have Internet Access at Home?' noted that a similar lack of access among young people aged 15-24 years old, with 759 million or 63 per cent unconnected at home.

"That so many children and young people have no internet at home is more than a digital gap –it is a digital canyon," said Henrietta Fore, UNICEF's executive director.

"Lack of connectivity doesn't just limit children and young people's ability to connect online. It prevents them from competing in the modern economy. It isolates them from the world. And in the event of school closures, such as those currently experienced by millions due to COVID-19, it causes them to lose out on education. Put bluntly: Lack of internet access is costing the next generation their futures," she added.

Digital divide perpetuating inequalities

Nearly a quarter of a billion students worldwide are still affected by COVID-19 school closures, forcing hundreds of millions of students to rely on virtual learning.

For those with no internet access, education can be out of reach. Even before the pandemic, a growing cohort of young people needed to learn foundational, transferable, digital, job-specific and entrepreneurial skills to compete in the 21^st century economy.

The digital divide is perpetuating inequalities that already divide countries and communities, the report notes.

Children and young people from the poorest households, rural and lower income states are falling even further behind their peers and are left with very little opportunity to ever catch up.

Globally, among school-age children from richest households, 58 per cent have internet connection at home, compared with only 16 per cent from the poorest households.

The same disparity exists across country income level as well. Less than 1 in 20 school-age children from low-income countries have internet connection at home, compared with nearly 9 in 10 from high-income countries.

Connecting rural populations still a formidable challenge

Houlin Zhao, secretary general of the International Telecommunicatin Union (ITU), said connecting rural populations remains a formidable challenge. Large parts of rural areas are not covered with a mobile-broadband network, and fewer rural households have access to the internet.

The gap in the mobile broadband adoption and internet use between developed and developing countries is especially large, putting the almost 1.3 billion school-age children mostly from low-income countries and rural regions at risk of missing out on their education because they lack access to the internet at home." 

Geographic disparities

There are also geographic disparities within countries and across regions. Globally, around 60 per cent of school-age children in urban areas do not have internet access at home, compared with around three-quarters of school-age children in rural households.

School-age children in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia are the most affected, with around 9 in 10 children unconnected.