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No internet, no education, says Vickie Robinson
The pandemic accelerated the shift to digital. But that left behind those offline, widening the digital access gap — with big implications for education.
Vickie Robinson, general manager of Microsoft's Airband Initiative, recalls how she dealt with school closing as a mother.
Having in-home connectivity helped her children transition from middle to high school with some sense of normalcy. But two-thirds of school-aged kids around the world didn't have that opportunity, she says during a Global Stage livestream conversation.
What's more, offline kids mostly come from marginalized backgrounds, which for Robinson makes the case for closing the digital access gap even more urgent.
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The weaknesses of a digital economy
Is there any downside to going cashless?
Not really, but there are challenges, Usman Ahmed, head of Global Public Affairs and Strategic Research at PayPal, says during a livestream conversation on closing the global digital gap hosted by GZERO in partnership with Visa.
On the one hand, digitizing payment allows the creation of other financial services around it — mainly access to finance for the unbanked. On the other, there are privacy and security concerns, although these also exist with cash.
Overall, though, Ahmed believes that going digital is something that nobody will solve on their own. Governments and the private sector need to work together, and digital access is useless without digital literacy.