Zimbabwe’s latest rollout of laptops, tablets and projectors to rural schools highlights both incremental progress and the depth of the country’s digital education gap, with fewer than one in twenty rural schools set to benefit from the current phase of ICT distribution.
Government has begun distributing 815 laptops, 2,115 tablets and 708 projectors to schools in Manicaland and Matabeleland South—two provinces that together account for more than 3,000 primary and secondary schools, according to Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education data.
This means the intervention, while notable, reaches only a small fraction of institutions grappling with chronic shortages of electricity, internet connectivity and basic learning materials.
At St Michael’s Primary School in Buhera, where 20 tablets, eight laptops and seven projectors were handed over this week, the equipment forms part of a broader donor-supported programme backed by UNICEF, the Global Partnership for Education and the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office.
In parallel with the ICT rollout, 154 schools have been solarised, allowing the use of digital tools in communities that were previously off-grid. However, with more than 8,000 public schools nationwide, the solarisation programme currently covers less than 2% of Zimbabwe’s school system.
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Government has also announced plans to connect all 154 solarised schools to Starlink satellite internet, drawing from a pool of more than 9,000 donated connectivity kits.
While the move could expand access to global learning platforms and online research, education analysts caution that connectivity alone will not address deeper structural constraints, including limited teacher ICT skills, device maintenance costs and uneven learner-to-device ratios.
Rural schools already lag behind their urban counterparts in pass rates, with national examination data consistently showing lower Grade Seven and O-Level outcomes in districts affected by infrastructure deficits and staffing shortages.
The digital rollout comes amid sustained underinvestment in education infrastructure. Treasury figures show education spending has remained below regional benchmarks as a share of GDP, forcing schools to rely heavily on levies and donor-funded interventions to close funding gaps left by the fiscus.
While authorities describe the programme as part of an “aggressive digital transformation” agenda for 2026, analysts warn it risks entrenching a two-speed education system—where a limited number of rural schools make digital gains while thousands remain offline and under-resourced.
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