Wikonnect Bringing Digital Skills to Kenya’s Youth
By: Daphne Kabeberi
Tags: Kenya, Wikonnect, Youth, Technology, Digital

Mobile connectivity has rapidly reached more than two-thirds of the world’s population. Yet a clear and persistent knowledge and skills gap restrict millions from using and leveraging mobile and internet technologies for improved well-being and economic livelihoods. To address this gap in tech skills, we at Tunapanda Institute — in partnership with Learning Lions, BRCK and GIZ — have been building an open-source e-learning platform to disseminate digital fluency to our users. The platform, dubbed Wikonnect, is inspired by Wikipedia’s model. Wikonnect is free and open for anyone to contribute to and learn from.

We are using a Human-Centered Design approach as we build the Wikonnect platform — and a community around it. As digital life reshapes Kenyan society at its core, Wikonnect is in this way helping to channel these changes in a positive, productive direction that respects local cultures while helping people from different backgrounds take part in the global digital economy.

At a Wikonnect Hackathon, building our Open Source Software Community

Wikonnect primarily aims to help individuals from vulnerable communities develop digital fluency. Whereas digital literacy is the ability to consume, share, and provide basic contributions to the digital realm, digital fluency involves conscious consumption and self-expression in the digital world, including the ability to safely coordinate activities with others around work and community development.

Wikonnect leverages mobile phones, the internet, community, and interactive H5P content to deliver bite-sized educational experiences at scale and at low cost. In this way, youth have easy access to digital literacy and fluency and can bring these skills into their communities. Wikonnect fundamentally tackles existing constraints to digital access, equipping people with basic internet skills and training to more effectively use the largest, greatest, and most powerful network of knowledge and information in world history.

Project Wikonnect has been ongoing for over a year now, having kicked off in October of 2019. So far, we have achieved the following:

Development of the core Wikonnect platform, enabling users to create and consume interactive learning content Creation of 10 core animated video lessons by the core content development team and 5 lessons by the open-source community Training of over 1500 participants in software development and digital content creation, tackling topics like cyberbullying, online scamming, and positive responses to the COVID-19 crisis. This was achieved by running 73 in-person (pre-Covid) and distanced (during Covid) trainings and hackathons. Onboarding of 4320 users onto the platform. Development of a robust monitoring and evaluation framework

In 2021, Tunapanda Institute’s and Learning Lions’ graduates in Kibera (very low-income area) and Turkana (very rural area) will be creating new educational video content under the guidance of more experienced professionals, which demonstrates that other people around the world can learn to do the same.

Additionally, working with the Keep Kenya Learning campaign, Wikonnect will soon support caregivers of Kenyan children who are out of school due to the pandemic. Via their mobile phones, the caregivers will be able to access guidance on at-home learning, as well as curated quality resources, both for the children’s use and theirs.

The Tunapanda Institute and Learning Lions teams have grown their competencies remarkably over the past year while working on project Wikonnect. This growth has been particularly rapid since April 2020, as we have all adjusted our working styles and skillsets to a socially-distanced world in the wake of Covid-19. Through Wikonnect, the communities around us have enjoyed getting to learn and implement digital skills in virtual settings which have encouraged togetherness despite the difficulties of being physically apart. More than ever before, we are certain that the work we are doing is meaningful — and arguably crucial — as it is teaching those from at-risk communities around us to forge forward and thrive in an increasingly digital world.

Special thanks to Jay Larson and David Richmond for their contribution to this article, especially through their thoughtful editing.