UNICEF – KigaliTech

Accenture, Dubai Cares, Microsoft and UNICEF launch digital education platform

Accenture, Dubai Cares, Microsoft and UNICEF announced the launch of a global, digital learning platform for young people. Operating under the Generation Unlimited partnership, the Passport to Earning platform aims to address the global education crisis, currently exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic and prepare the next generation for decent work.

The platform will provide young people aged 15-24 across the world with free, certified education and skills training—with content spanning across digital, foundational, role-based, and technical skills. Young people using the platform will be able to use the certifications gained to support future employment and entrepreneurship opportunities made available on the platform. The Passport to Earning platform was unveiled today at the RewirEd Summit, the largest global education summit of its kind, led by Dubai Cares, in partnership with Expo 2020 Dubai and in close coordination with the UAE Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation (MoFAIC), and delivered in partnership with global stakeholders.

“The youth of today represent the leaders of tomorrow. Preparing and equipping them for the challenges that lie ahead of us is critical to ensuring that our future is in capable hands. Passport to Earning will provide young individuals with an effective tool to strengthen and upscale their skillsets and empower their professional journeys towards greater goals. In addition, the RewirEd Summit proved to be a fitting gathering to launch this platform in line with the conversations we hosted around the summit’s first day theme: Youth, Skills and the Future of Work,” said His Excellency Dr. Tariq Al Gurg, Chief Executive Officer and Vice-Chairman of Dubai Cares.

Passport to Earning is built on Microsoft’s Community Training (MCT) platform and will form an extension of UNICEF and Microsoft’s Learning Passport, a digital learning platform aimed at school-age children struggling to access mainstream education. Operational in 20 countries, the Learning Passport was recently identified by Time Magazine as one of the 100 best inventions of 2021.

“We’ve seen first-hand how technology can be used in transformative ways to reach and connect learners—even in the most challenging scenarios. Passport to Earning is a powerful tool that allows us to reach young people and provide them with digital skilling opportunities at scale. We’re thrilled to work with UNICEF, GenU, Accenture and Dubai Cares to bring this program to life,” said Kate Behncken, Vice President and Lead of Microsoft Philanthropies.

The platform will offer online and offline digitalized curricula with supplemental content curated at the national level. It will keep young people learning—both inside and outside of classrooms—with content that is not dependent on a consistent web connection. It will also build government capacity to provide sustainable skilling and employment opportunities in the digital economy.

“Young people across the world are poised to advance their societies and economies. Yet, without access to relevant, quality education and training opportunities, they are unable to truly participate in the 21st century workforce. The Passport to Earning, which builds upon proven solutions in delivering education in the most challenging of environments, will provide young people with the skills and certification they need to create a better, more sustainable world,” said Omar Abdi, UNICEF Deputy Executive Director.

According to a recent World Bank-UNESCO-UNICEF report, the current generation of students risks losing $17 trillion in lifetime earnings—around 14 per cent of today’s global GDP—as a result of COVID-19 pandemic-related school closures. However, even before the pandemic, young people were not learning the skills necessary for future work. Pre-pandemic data showed that without immediate action, by 2030 an estimated 825 million children will not acquire the basic secondary-level skills—such as transferable, digital and job-specific skills—needed to support lifelong learning and employment.

“The fourth industrial revolution is bringing with it irreversible changes for the education sector and the labor market—and we must not fail to do our part in enabling young people to prepare for what’s ahead. Passport to Earning exemplifies what partnerships between the public and private sectors, the UN and young people can achieve. It’s a new, modern, and inclusive global skilling solution that will connect millions of underserved youth worldwide with state-of-the-art curriculum, certifications, and ultimately jobs,” said Kevin Frey, Chief Executive Officer of GenU.

Rapidly advancing digital solutions have the potential to reach all young people and help them to access world-class learning. Accenture will bring expertise in digital learning and a user-centric design approach to Passport to Earning.

“The need for digital skills has never been greater, especially in those regions hardest hit by global inequalities and the impacts of COVID. We are proud to partner with UNICEF, Microsoft and Dubai Cares on Passport to Earning to support many thousands of young people get a job or start a business. Working with our global partners, Accenture’s Skills to Succeed initiative has equipped over 4.5 million people with the skills to make substantive improvements to their lives,” said Jill Huntley, Managing Director for Corporate Citizenship at Accenture.

www.unicef.org

Ericsson pledges to support one million young people by 2025 with access to digital learning and skills

Ericsson announces a major new commitment to empower one million children and young people by 2025 through access to digital learning, tools, content and development programs.

This commitment forms part of the World Economic Forum-aligned EDISON Alliance 1 Billion Lives Challenge – a global movement of forty-five champions from the public and private sectors.

The members, including Ericsson, are committed to prioritizing digital inclusion as foundational to the achievement of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) so that every person can fully participate in the digital economy and society.

The ‘1 Billion Lives Challenge’ brings together digital inclusion commitments from governments, companies and other organizations globally.

Ericsson’s new commitment will be unveiled today by company President and CEO, Börje Ekholm, in a virtual address to the Global Forum for Children and Youth. Ekholm will explain the criticality of the work to Ericsson in realizing its mission: to enable a world where limitless connectivity improves lives, redefines business and pioneers a sustainable future – a world where limitless connectivity means limitless possibility.

Building on a legacy of work in digital inclusion

Today’s commitment will be realized through Ericsson’s leading Connect To Learn initiative which has positively impacted more than 200,000 children and young people in more than 25 countries around the world since its foundation in 2010.

The initiative is enabling access to quality education for underserved and unconnected communities and establishing an inclusive digital platform with a focus on empowering the next generation with digital skills, essential for their socio-economic development. It also aims to improve gender equality by empowering women and girls through ICT.

Ericsson President and CEO, Börje Ekholm, says: “At the heart of Ericsson’s purpose is the belief that connectivity creates possibilities for all people. We believe it is a responsibility of government and business to work together to build a more equitable future for children and young people – digital connection is a critical enabler of this, ensuring that every young person has access to a quality internet connection and can acquire the necessary skills to thrive in a digital economy.”

He adds: “This is why we are making this pledge to help narrow the digital divide and create a more equitable society. This is the latest milestone for Ericsson’s Connect To Learn program, which has been working for over 10 years to advance digital inclusion. However, there is still much more to be done. We call on partners, customers, governments and NGOs to join us in pledging the resources needed to make a real, lasting difference.”

A long-term partnership with the EDISON Alliance

Ericsson’s commitment to the World Economic Forum’s EDISON Alliance 1 Billion lives challenge comes in addition to its partnership with UNICEF, in support of the Giga Initiative. The Giga Initiative is a partner of the EDISON alliance and aims to connect every school to the internet by 2030 and every young person to information, opportunity, and choice.

www.ericsson.com

UNICEF and Liquid Intelligent Technologies launch a partnership to help Giga bridge the digital divide in Africa

UNICEF and Liquid Intelligent Technologies, a business of Cassava Technologies, a pan-African technology group, announced a partnership in support of Giga’s work to connect every school to the Internet and every young person to information, opportunity, and choice.

Liquid will share anonymized data to support Giga’s work to map the location and connectivity status of schools in Africa. Liquid will also share information with Giga about schools’ proximity to telecoms infrastructure and will help develop a connectivity monitoring platform. The resulting information will provide a basis for better-targeted investment to connect schools, including in hard-to-reach areas.

The partnership will initially focus on Kenya but will aim to incorporate other Liquid markets over time, including South Africa, Zambia, Botswana, Tanzania, Uganda, Zimbabwe and Rwanda.

“This partnership with Liquid will allow our Giga team to gain a deeper understanding of the connectivity landscape in Kenya and across Africa,” said Thomas Davin, Director, Office of Innovation at UNICEF. “That knowledge will help UNICEF to get more schools online, giving children access to the opportunities they need to flourish.”

Ben Roberts, Group Chief Technology and Innovation Officer at Liquid Intelligent Technologies, said, “The Giga Initiative from UNICEF and ITU echoes Liquid’s sentiment of creating a digitally resilient economy in Kenya and Africa at large. There is no better place to start than our schools that shape the minds of our children, thereby securing our future. Through our expertise in the digital and telecom landscape, we will support UNICEF in its endeavour to map school connectivity data across Kenya by providing real-time figures to measure impact. This initiative also reiterates the vision of our parent company – Cassava Technologies, of creating a digitally connected continent that leaves no African behind.”

Around half of the world’s population still has no meaningful access to the Internet. UNICEF and Liquid are committed to addressing this digital divide, which has widened during the COVID-19 pandemic. Giga has already mapped over 1 million schools and their connectivity around the world and has connected over 3,000 schools.

Liquid has connected 4,000 schools to internet across Africa. The company aspires to continue empowering schools with digital technology and has mapped 150,000 schools through the continent.

Giga is part of UNICEF’s broader Reimagine Education initiative, the UN Secretary General’s Common Agenda and Roadmap for Digital Cooperation, and ITU’s Partner2 Connect Coalition. It has the potential to transform efforts to narrow the digital divide, providing a connectivity layer on which digital empowerment initiatives can build.

www.liquid.tech

Airtel Africa and UNICEF announce multi-million dollar partnership to scale-up digital learning for children across Africa

Airtel Africa and UNICEF have announced a five-year pan-African partnership to help accelerate the roll-out of digital learning through connecting schools to the internet and ensuring free access to learning platforms across 13 countries. By providing equal access to quality digital learning, particularly for the most vulnerable children, the partnership will help to ensure that every child reaches their full potential.

Airtel Africa, a leading provider of telecommunications and mobile money services in Africa, is the first African private sector partner to make a multimillion-dollar commitment to ‘Reimagine Education’, a global initiative launched by UNICEF in 2020 calling for public and private sector investment in digital learning as an essential service for every child and young person across the globe. This initiative aims to to give children a chance to catch up on their learning needs amid the ongoing global pandemic.

“Hundreds of millions of children in Africa have seen their education disrupted or put on hold because of the COVID-19 pandemic,” said UNICEF Executive Director Henrietta Fore. “By championing digital education for children in Africa, this partnership with Airtel Africa will help put children’s learning back on track.”

Airtel Africa’s financial and in-kind contribution for this partnership is $57 million over five years to 2027. The programme will call on technology and expertise, in addition to direct financial support to connect schools and communities to the internet, enable free access to online educational content for learners. It will also provide vital data insights to inform UNICEF’s work to scale-up digital learning and help ensure it is sustainable and meets students’ needs across Africa.

“As a business, we have focused on education as a key area of our corporate social responsibility, and we are delighted that this partnership with UNICEF will enable us to accelerate results. It also coincides with the launch of our new sustainability strategy, which lays out our commitment to education,” said Olusegun Ogunsanya, CEO of Airtel Africa. “We are excited to be working with UNICEF to advance the education agenda on the continent through facilitating connectivity and online access to play a role in driving change,” he added.

The Airtel Africa and UNICEF pan-Africanpartnership will benefit learners in Chad, Congo, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Gabon, Kenya, Madagascar, Malawi, Niger, Nigeria, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia.

www.unicef.org

www.airtel.africa