Overview:
Uganda wants a digitally skilled workforce, but a Unicef study finds most secondary schools lack the reliable power, internet and computers needed to build one.
Uganda’s plans to build a digitally skilled workforce face a major hurdle in its secondary schools, where unreliable electricity, patchy internet and too few computers are holding back digital learning, a Unicef-led assessment shows.
The study, From Unplugged to ICT-Ready: A Digital Readiness Assessment of Secondary Schools in Uganda, covered 3,257 schools. It found that only 671, or 20%, are ICT-ready, with reliable power, stable internet and adequate access to devices. Another 41% are semi-connected, while 39% are classified as “unplugged”.
The findings come as the government implements its Digital Transformation Roadmap 2023/24–2027/28, which lists digital skills among its five pillars. According to Daily Monitor, the roadmap targets 300,000 jobs, and the government is also promoting business process outsourcing as a source of employment for young people.
Those plans depend on young people leaving school with digital skills. The assessment, however, shows that many learners have little regular access to the tools they would need to build them.
The report found that 38% of secondary schools had no internet connection at all. Among connected schools, nearly a third experienced daily disruptions and about a quarter weekly outages. Only 40% said their connection was fast enough to support teaching.
In many schools, the researchers found, the internet was confined to the computer laboratory rather than used in everyday lessons.
Rural learners are most affected. The report found that 44% of rural schools had no internet, compared with 33% of urban schools. Eastern Uganda had the highest share of offline schools, at 42%, and northern Uganda recorded the most frequent daily disruptions.
Electricity reaches about 98% of secondary schools, but the report found that supply is often too erratic to keep computers running. Only half of schools have power for more than 16 hours a day, about 35% get between five and 15 hours, and 15% get fewer than five hours.
About 17% of schools rely on solar systems, generators or other off-grid sources, which the researchers said were prone to interruptions. National grid connection stands at 91% of schools in central Uganda, 85% in the west and 84% in the east, but only 59% in the north.
One in five rural schools receives fewer than five hours of electricity a day, compared with 6% of urban schools. Government-aided schools were twice as likely as private schools to have inadequate power.
Device shortages add to the problem. Although 80% of schools have at least one computer laboratory, the national median is 38 learners per device, rising to 62 in poorly equipped schools.
The burden is heaviest in government-aided schools. They have a median enrolment of 686 learners, against about 300 in private schools, and average 48 learners per computer. Private community schools average 33 learners per device and faith-based schools 27.
Head teachers see a clear link between digital learning and jobs. In the survey, 64% of school leaders said digital skills improve learners’ employability. More than 90% said digital learning was important for computer literacy and access to information, and nearly 70% said ICT improves learning in other subjects.
Dr Swaib Kaggwa Nsereko, a mass communication lecturer at the Islamic University in Uganda, said reliable internet and other digital infrastructure were becoming as essential to education as textbooks and classrooms.
The assessment found some progress in online learning. Of the 2,055 schools with internet, 986 use at least one e-learning platform. The National Curriculum Development Centre’s platform is popular with private schools, while government schools more often use Cyber School Technology.
Unicef has said the new competency-based curriculum expects learners to do much of their own research online, which makes school connectivity central to how they learn.
The assessment was led by Unicef with the Ministry of Education and Sports and the Association of Secondary School Headteachers of Uganda, with support from the Mastercard Foundation and the Luigi Giussani Foundation. It informs the Leaders in Teaching programme, a five-year initiative covering 2,091 secondary schools.