How Does UNICEF Plan To Provide Internet To Schools In Kyrgyzstan

By Rishma Banerjee

Children’s international non-profit organization, UNICEF, is reportedly talking to the government of Kyrgyzstan, in order to leverage blockchain technology in an effort to provide Internet access to every school in the country. Munir Mammadzade, the deputy representative for UNICEF Kyrgyzstan, said,

“We are at the early stages of exploring a blockchain-based solution for the Project Connect initiative in Kyrgyzstan where the government is working with UNICEF and the private sector to connect every school in the country to the Internet and provide access to information and opportunity to all young people.”

This is part of a broader initiative, called the Project Connect, through which UNICEF aims to engage over 1,500 local schools in Kyrgyzstan as well try to facilitate the use of a blockchain-based solution to improve and monitor Internet connectivity levels. As of now, the Project Connect has been successful in mapping Internet connectivity levels for over 150,000 schools across the globe of which 1,560 schools are based in Kyrgyzstan. Unicef’s reports indicate that close to half of these 1560 schools have been identified as having either no Internet connectivity or simply no data on the matter.

Chris Fabian, the lead personnel of UNICEF Ventures, said that the work was all happening on “an accelerated, crazy crypto timeline,” and that “the blockchain piece” of Project Connect would come over the course of the present year. He further states,

“Right now, we’re still at a very early modular stage, doing the mapping, getting the connectivity piece and figuring out the accounting… You can easily see where the blockchain layers would come in … If you want to pay as a donor – government or company – for a whole section of the country to come online, wouldn’t you rather do that in a way that is authentic and real and accountable as opposed to just sending money somewhere and hoping two years later that something happens?”

He is also of the opinion that blockchain can indeed help to “improve the monitoring of the quality of Internet in schools and other vital facilities,” emphasizing that the potential for distributed ledger technology “as accounting, management and monitoring” is, in his opinion, multi-faceted.