Battery-powered offline virtual libraries for students

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has provided digital libraries to the University of Juba and the Whitaker Peace and Development Initiative Community Learning Centre in South Sudan to bring online educational materials to students with limited or no internet access and power.

Under the UNESCO Digital Library Initiative (DLI), which focuses on building a culture of reading and research through digital media, the two libraries were launched during a virtual event.

Julius Banda, the head of office and UNESCO’s South Sudanese representative, told University World News the initiative will benefit South Sudan, since there is limited internet connectivity for vulnerable adolescents and youths.

“The digital libraries are seen as powerful tools to ensure everyone has access to equitable, inclusive and quality education, especially given the digital divide and during the COVID-19 pandemic,” Banda added.

Internet access is a human right

“The Digital Library Initiative facilitates access to education resources offline, but does not replace the need to invest in broadband and the related ICT infrastructure,” said Banda.

“With the declaration of access to the internet by the United Nations as a human right, governments have a duty to invest in the provision of the internet to its citizens and, of course, the benefit is huge to a nation if this can begin with institutions of higher learning,” Banda pointed out.

Expanding further, Saidou Sireh Jallow, the chief of education at the UNESCO Nairobi regional office, told University World News that the digital library initiative is the brainchild of Ann Therese Ndong-Jatta, the UNESCO regional director for Eastern Africa.

“It evolved from her determination to ensure that no one is left behind in the attainment of SDG 4 – the Sustainable Development Goal on education.”

“The Digital Library Initiative is aimed at improving the quality of education and promoting the inclusion of learners in vulnerable situations by gradually building the culture of reading and autonomous learning through research on available educational materials in the digital library,” Jallow added.

“[During] the pilot, the DLI project is donating digital libraries to learners and teachers in select secondary schools, teacher training colleges and universities in remote areas, often with limited or no internet,” Jallow said.

“The Initiative was first launched in November 2019 at the University of Seychelles with Distance Education for Africa (DEAfrica), our long-standing partner, and subsequently in Kenya, Uganda and now South Sudan,” he said.

“Two more countries, the Comoros and Madagascar, will still benefit from the pilot,” Jallow concluded.

Area Community Hotspot

Sidiki Traore, the founder and president of the US-based DEAfrica, told University World News: “DLI is a great initiative in accessing educational materials without an internet connection through a device called Remote Area Community Hotspot for Education and Learning (RACHEL).”

RACHEL is a small-sized portable networked content access server powered by a rechargeable battery lasting more than five hours and designed to provide a wealth of educational resources in areas where access to the internet is either limited or non-existent, according to Traore.

RACHEL’s local area network connection can be either wireless (up to 150 feet, or 45.7m) or wired or both. The server supports multiple concurrent connections to devices: up to 20 simultaneous media streaming sessions or up to 50 client devices accessing files made up of text and graphics.

The resources hosted on the server can be customised and augmented by teachers and periodically updated free of charge when internet connection is available.

The device is the product of World Possible, a non-profit organisation based in the US, which focuses on making information available offline.

A milestone moment

Collence Takaingenhamo Chisita, a post-doctoral research fellow in library and information service at the University of South Africa, described the initiative as a “milestone development”.

“UNESCO should be applauded for leading in bridging the digital divide and also turning the device into a digital dividend, since access to information is a key frontier for conquest in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic and the infodemic,” Chisita pointed out.

“Hopefully, we will draw lessons on how to move such a grandiose project and gear up for the benefit of humanity,” said Chisita, who is the lead author of the study entitled ‘Rethinking academic library space amidst the COVID-19 pandemic in South Africa: Preparing for the future’.

Distance education tool

Higher education expert Magdi Tawfik Abdelhamid from Cairo’s National Research Center, told University World News that poor connectivity in South Sudan and the high cost of internet-enabled cellular phones has kept most students disconnected.

UNESCO’s offline accessible virtual library is, therefore, an ideal solution for promoting remote learning, especially in the time of the coronavirus pandemic.

Abdelhamid’s views are borne out by statistics which show that, out of a South Sudanese population of about 11.4 million, only 900,716 have access to the internet and about 28% of the population have access to electricity.

In addition, Sudan ranked 135th in the world for mobile speeds and 169th for fixed broadband speeds during February 2021, according to Speedtest Global Index.

South Sudan is one of the most expensive countries in Africa for internet use with an average retail bandwidth price, via satellite, currently around US$4,000 per megabit.

Africa’s digital transformation

Professor Juma Shabani, director of the Doctoral School at the University of Burundi and former director of development, coordination and monitoring of UNESCO programmes with a special focus on Africa, told University World News that the UNESCO offline and battery-powered virtual library paved the way for a realistic approach to African digital transformation to enhance university access.

This is especially the case in the post-COVID-19 world, as Sub-Saharan Africa has low internet capacity, as high as 80% of students with no access to internet at home, and about half of the population have no access to electricity.

“While COVID-19 puts brakes on academic activity and caused disruptions in learning at African universities, offline digital libraries as knowledge portals can ensure that disadvantaged groups enjoy direct access to high-quality educational content and information resources at no cost,” said Shabani.

Beneficiaries include students in refugee camps, poor students, internally and forcibly displaced persons, as well as other marginalised groups, along with students in African prisons, said Shabani.