Free State School receives multimedia centre from MTN SA Foundation

• MTN SA Foundation cut the ribbon at a multimedia centre it helped set up at JS Moroka High School in Thaba’Nchu, Free State.
• The centre contains PCs, a server and an interactive white board and cost R1.3 million.
• MTN SA Foundation general manager Arthur Mukhuvha says the centre will address the digital divide.

Learners from the JS Moroka High School in Thaba’Nchu, Free State will be getting easy access to technology thanks to efforts from the MTN South Africa Foundation.

The charitable organisation handed over the keys to a new multimedia centre recently. The centre will be used for everyday assignments, internet access as well as classes that revolve around programming and problem solving. The facility cost R1.3 million to build.

The centre is home to 35 computers, a server, and an interactive whiteboard for teaching. The centre was constructed as part of a partnership between MTN SA Foundation ad the Free State Department of Education.

“For the learners at the JS Moroka High School, the new centre will offer the opportunity to develop hands-on experience with the essential technological tools and skills needed for the digital world. These benefits will assist them to be ‘the best they can be’ at school and help them acquire skills required by employers after they complete their high school educations,” general manager of the MTN SA Foundation, Arthur Mukhuvha.

The goal with this centre is to shrink the digital divide. According to the Development Bank of Southern Africa, internet penetration sits at 43 percent for Africa, highlighting that the majority of Africans don’t have internet access. This hampers digital education efforts given that internet access is a base requirement for that education.

South Africa is far above that average with an estimate 74 percent of the population able to access the internet. The problem locally is that the cost of technology is often too high for folks to afford connectivity at home. Multimedia centres such as the one at JS Moroka High School go a long way to address the digital divide.

This is, as you can imagine, a massive job and as Mukhuvha notes, it requires a partnership between the private and public sectors.

“We are proud of our investment in more than 300 multimedia and computer centres at schools across South Africa. We have complemented these investments with teacher training and developments like the MTN Online School, launched in cooperation with the Department of Basic Education to help speed up the digitisation of education content. Creating a new future will depend on access to empowered, quality education. At the MTN SA Foundation, we see ourselves at the coal-face of this drive as an enabler working towards a more equitable society, with projects like the JS Moroko High School’s multimedia centre, as the proof points,” Mukhuvha concludes.

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