Kenya’s telco giant Safaricom is partnering with universities to offer subsidized e-learning tariffs to students and faculties in order to facilitate online classes.
This follows government’s directive to close all learning institutions on March 15 after the country announced its first case of Coronavirus.
It has for instance already partnered with the United States International University (USIU) Africa where it is offering mobile data bundles dubbed ‘Remote learning mobile data subsidy’ to support the university’s e-learning platform.
Through the partnership, students and faculty is getting 10GB data bundles at a discounted price of Sh500 for a period of 30 days, the same data bundle costs Sh1800 in the market.
‘’During this period, the university is dedicated to maintaining the quality of education by ensuring that learning and teaching continues until the end of the semester,’’ USIU said in a statement.
It indicated that the studies are facilitated through the use of online learning platforms, Blackboard, as default mode of instruction, zoom as video conferencing tool and e-book, e-journals and other e-resources as library.
To enjoy the data subsidy, users are required to enter their safaricom numbers in a n e-form accessed by logging in admission number and staff number for the faculty.
On Thursday, Safaricom’s chief customer Officer Sylvia Mulinge indicated that the firm had been approached by a section of learning and corporate institutions to lower their internet costs, to ensure both learning and working continues.
She did not however give more information on the matter, only stating that the telco may review its data price to support students.
