EdTech for social and eonomic inclusion: The digital divide multiplier
By Precious Ebere-Chinonso Obi
The promise of Educational Technology (EdTech) is that it democratizes opportunity, reaching the furthest-flung student and leveling the playing field. This is the prevailing narrative that simple digital access is the fast-track to social and economic inclusion. However, in low-resource environments like Nigeria, EdTech, when deployed carelessly, does not close the inequality gap; it acts as a Digital Divide Multiplier. It systematically rewards the already privileged while making the structural barriers for the marginalized even higher.
The failure to achieve inclusion stems from three critical chasms: Infrastructure, Content, and Affordability.
- The Infrastructure Chasm: Access is not universal inclusion requires equitable access to the foundational layer: reliable power, suitable devices, and affordable bandwidth. Yet, the stark disparity between urban and rural centers renders inclusion a myth. In Nigeria, for instance, only about 19.4% of the rural population has good internet access, compared to over 47% in urban areas. When remote learning is imposed on such a fractured landscape, over 80% of children in low-income brackets are left behind, exacerbating “Learning Poverty.”
EdTech, dependent on a reliable grid and data subscription, forces the low-income household to bear the substantial cost of infrastructure provision, turning education from a public good into a costly private investment reserved for the affluent. This is why multi-million-dollar device-heavy projects in developing regions have repeatedly failed to yield significant learning impact; the technology itself is meaningless without sustained utility.
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- The Content Trap: Economic Relevance vs. Erasure: True economic inclusion requires skills that translate into local jobs and value creation. The majority of global EdTech content is non-localized, focusing on generalized Western curricula or skills irrelevant to the Nigerian economic context or cultural reality. This creates a cognitive dissonance that limits its economic utility. Students might gain digital literacy in using a foreign platform, but they fail to acquire context-specific knowledge relevant to local governance, agricultural science, or entrepreneurial finance, which are the true drivers of sub-Saharan GDP growth. The solution demands a mandatory pivot toward mobile-first, low-data, curriculum-aligned, open-source resources developed within the country, ensuring the knowledge disseminated directly contributes to localized economic transformation.
- The Affordability Barrier: Financing Digital Equity
Even where access exists, the cost is prohibitive. The median price of an entry-level mobile broadband plan in Nigeria still consumes over 4% of the average gross national income per capita a disproportionate financial burden that pushes education-focused data use out of reach for most families battered by inflation. EdTech cannot be a viable path to inclusion if its subscription model is inherently divisive.
The aggressive policy pivot necessary for true social and economic inclusion must involve treating digital bandwidth and core educational software as critical, subsidized national utilities. This means government investment in sovereign computational infrastructure (as argued in the companion article), coupled with a universal bandwidth subsidy for verified educational access. Until EdTech is pulled by demand rooted in relevant content and accessible infrastructure, rather than pushed by donor-led procurement metrics (e.g., counting devices distributed), it will remain a tool for elite enrichment, not mass inclusion.
- Precious Ebere-Chinonso Obi, CEO of Do Take Action and independent consultant on edtech, climate change, public policy, and women’s procurement empowerment, writes from FCT, Nigeria.
