South Africa has approximately 23,000 public schools, yet around 17,000 remain completely offline¹. That means only about 6,000 have some form of internet connectivity, while roughly 74% of public schools have no access at all – not for teaching and learning, not for research, not for school administration, and not for the digital tools that increasingly shape education and work.
These numbers should alarm all of us.
In a world where technology and connectivity are now basic table stakes in almost every career path, leaving schools offline is not a minor infrastructure gap. It is a structural disadvantage with serious socio-economic implications. In the age of artificial intelligence, that disadvantage is becoming even more severe.
UNESCO says only 40% of primary schools globally are connected to the internet, and a global survey it referenced found that fewer than 10% of schools and universities had implemented internal policies on the use of AI². In other words, while the world is moving into an AI-shaped future, many schools are still struggling to get online at all.
How can a child who has never meaningfully experienced connectivity, and never been exposed to tech-enabled learning, be expected to compete in a labour market that increasingly assumes digital fluency? How can learners build research skills, information literacy, digital confidence and critical thinking if they are cut off from the very tools through which modern knowledge is accessed, tested and applied? This fundamentally affects the quality of education now, and it shapes the economic inclusion of these learners later in life, possibly permanently.
Globally, the contrast between connected and unconnected learners is stark. UNICEF estimates that 1.3 billion school-age children still lack internet access at home and says children without connectivity are at a disadvantage in the global race to acquire digital competencies. Its earlier joint work with the ITU found that in low-income countries, less than one in 20 school-age children had internet access at home, compared with nearly nine in 10 in high-income countries.3 That gap is not just about convenience. It is about whether learners can build the capabilities that modern economies increasingly demand.
The same pattern is visible in higher-income systems too. OECD data shows that around three in four students across OECD countries report having sufficient access to digital devices and the internet when needed, and about 88% had both internet at home and a computer they could use for schoolwork. By 2022, around 97% of 15-year-olds in OECD countries lived in households with an internet connection.4 That does not mean those systems have solved digital learning, but it does show the baseline from which many of the world’s better-resourced learners now start.
South Africa cannot build a competitive, inclusive economy if the majority of its public-school learners are starting so far behind that baseline. Internet connectivity in schools is not just about letting learners “go online”. It is about enabling a fundamentally better learning environment. Connected schools can access digital learning platforms, richer curriculum resources, online assessments, collaboration tools, coding and STEM content, teacher development resources, and the wider universe of knowledge beyond the printed textbook. School administration also becomes more effective – operational management all increasingly depend on digital systems.
Digital connectivity at school is vital for quality education, yet progress in increasing school connectivity remains slow. This matters even more in the AI era. Whether learners become engineers, teachers, entrepreneurs, artisans, accountants, nurses, marketers or technicians, they will enter workplaces shaped by automation, data, digital workflows and AI-assisted decision-making. UNESCO notes that digital and AI competency frameworks now increasingly prioritise human agency, critical thinking and ethics alongside technical capability.5
But schools cannot teach those competencies meaningfully if they remain disconnected from the digital environment in which they are supposed to be developed.
At MetroFibre, we fully understand the limitations of getting connectivity into every school, in every region. Not all connectivity technologies reach every school or are equally suitable in every context. For example, the economics of trenching fibre to every school in the country are simply not realistic. But what we absolutely can do, and what we are doing, is reinvesting in local communities where our network has the coverage and scale to do so. As our fibre footprint grows into many of South Africa’s previously underserved communities, so too does our responsibility to ensure that schools within our reach are not left behind.
Improving academic performance and promoting research skills and critical thinking for learners and teachers is at the heart of that commitment. Over the past few years, MetroFibre has sponsored more than 32 schools across the Eastern Cape, Gauteng, KwaZulu-Natal and North-West Province, registered with the Department of Basic Education or the Department of Higher Education and Training, with a 1Gbps download / 500Mbps upload fibre package. For many schools, internet connectivity remains financially out of reach without either full sponsorship or serious subsidisation.
This is about much more than internet connectivity. It is about opening access to life-changing digital skills and exposure. It is about giving learners and teachers the ability to reach beyond the classroom. It is about making research possible, improving school communication, strengthening administration, and helping young people build the digital confidence and critical thinking that the modern world increasingly assumes. Providing connectivity to underserved schools within proximity to our network is one practical way to make a tangible difference where it is needed most.
A technologically enabled future is the only credible path to greater economic and social inclusion in South Africa. It will make our economy more competitive as we move deeper into the Fourth Industrial Revolution. But that future cannot be built only for those who are already connected. It must include the children in schools that today remain digitally invisible and disconnected.
Because when a school is offline, the real loss is human potential.
And South Africa cannot afford to leave that much potential disconnected.
Written by Liza Kok, Chief Marketing Officer at MetroFibre