Rwanda’s Ministry of Education has entered into a partnership with Microsoft Corporation that will see incorporation of information and communication technology into various aspects of the country’s education sector.
The partnership which is aimed enabling speedy digital transformation of the education sector will see Microsoft bring onboard access to the latest technology and skills like the ‘Smart Classrooms Initiative,’ which will complement the One Laptop per Child (OLPC) programme.
The Smart Classroom implementation is underway in 1,500 ‘smart’ classrooms that are being set up while 150 Microsoft Academies are being set up to help train students, teachers and local community.
The partnership will also see over three million students and 61,000 teachers access Wi-Fi internet during learning after conducting a pilot phase of a connectivity programme that will use a new technology, TV White Spaces technology.
TV White Spaces technology utilises the unused space in terrestrial TV spectrum to provide cheap internet connectivity to remote areas, and can propagate the signal to a radius of about 10 kilometres and is more affordable.
The pilot tests involved Lycee de Kigali and University of Rwanda’s College of Business and Economics.
