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Add to Preferred SourcesThe Government of Kazakhstan, the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) agreed to collaborate on GIGA, a UNICEF-ITU global initiative to connect every school to the Internet and every young person in Kazakhstan to information, opportunity and choice.
Launched in 2019, GIGA sets the goal of providing connectivity to every school in the world. Some 3.7 billion people in the world do not have access to the Internet, of whom 360 million are young people. A lack of access to the Internet means children and young people are excluded from the wealth of information available online, limiting their resources to learn and to grow, and to fulfill their potential. Closing the digital divide requires global cooperation, leadership, and innovation in finance and technology.
According to ITU, the official source for global ICT statistics, nearly 80 percent of the population in Kazakhstan uses the Internet, but the figure across the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) region ranges between 21 percent and 81 percent. Kazakhstan is among the countries with the highest level of mobile-broadband penetration in the CIS region. The country is also a regional leader in access to computers and offered the lowest price per gigabyte of all CIS countries with capped entry-level fixed-broadband plans in 2017.
“ITU’s exciting new joint project with UNICEF stems from my cast-iron conviction about the importance of empowering young people,” said Doreen Bogdan-Martin, Director ITU Telecommunication Development Bureau.
Kazakhstan’s commitment to school connectivity is one of the government’s most important and far-reaching decisions because it is the youth of today who will drive the next wave of digital progress.
Furthermore, the GIGA project contributes to the ITU Connect 2030 Agenda, which among others, aims to bridge the digital divide and provide broadband access to all.
Original source: ITU
Published on 31 January 2020