02 April 2025

Tatenda Mavetera, Zimbabwe’s Minister of Information and Communication Technology, has announced that the country has been selected to lead the Giga initiative, a collaborative effort between the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) aimed at connecting schools to the internet and information resources by the year 2030.

According to UNICEF, the initiative leverages the organization’s experience in education and procurement, ITU’s regulatory and policy expertise, and the private sector’s capability to implement technological solutions rapidly.

“The Giga Project: Accelerating global school connectivity. Zimbabwe has been selected in Southern Africa to implement this project, providing solar power and connectivity to various schools,” said Mavetera.

Since the project’s launch in 2019, UNICEF reports that it has offered connectivity support to 34 countries, increasing internet access for 7.79 million students, and has identified and mapped 2.1 million schools across 141 countries. The goal of the Giga Project is to map and connect up to six million schools worldwide that currently lack internet access by 2030.

“At MWC, we discussed concrete projects and strategies to tackle these challenges. We will soon initiate a 15-million-Euro broadband infrastructure mapping project to fulfil our mandate,” said Cosmas Luckyson Zavazava, director of ITU.