Computers for Schools Burundi, led by executive director Emmanuel Ngendakuriyo, is installing solar power systems in schools across Burundi's 18 provinces and building an e-learning platform to go with them, working with academics including Prof. Jasmin Cowin of Touro College.
About 85% of rural schools in Burundi lack access to electricity, ruling out after-school programmes, online learning and even basic homework support after dark. Roughly 1.77 million rural Burundians face food insecurity, and agriculture, which makes up 80% of the workforce, has not fully recovered from the country's 1993 to 2005 civil war.
The programme's organisers argue that reliable power and digital access are prerequisites for the ICT literacy young Burundians will need to compete for work in a more automated global economy, a gap the COVID-19 pandemic made harder to ignore.