AI Widens Digital Divide, Leaving Children Behind

I am watching the rapid evolution of the digital world with mixed feelings.

The potential is significant. Technology is reshaping how children learn, how health systems reach patients, and how economies create opportunity.

The scale of this transformation is striking. But most of all its speed.

Artificial intelligence has reached more than a billion users faster than any previous general-purpose technology, outpacing even the internet.

But the world is not responding to this transformation at the same pace.

In richer countries, the debate is already about how to manage AI, its risks, its impact on jobs, and how to adapt to rapid change. In many developing countries, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, the question is far more basic: how to get connected at all, and what that connection could unlock.

While technology accelerates, an estimated two thirds of the world’s children – some 1.3 billion girls and boys aged 3 to 17 – still have no internet access at home. Most live in Africa and Asia. Without connection, they cannot build the skills needed to participate in digital economies or access the opportunities that come with them.

A whole world is being shaped without them. Their question is not how to use AI, but whether they will ever catch up.

These are the early contours of a structural digital divide.

Africa has some of the world’s fastest-growing and youngest populations. Jobs are not only an economic priority; they are central to social cohesion and long-term stability. Digital technologies, from AI to e-commerce and financial services offer a pathway to create those jobs, build skills, and connect economies to global value chains.

But without connectivity, that pathway remains out of reach.

Connectivity underpins how countries deliver education, strengthen health systems, and expand economic opportunity.This is why UNICEF is working with partners,from the ITU and national governments to the World Bank and other international financial institutions – to connect schools, health centres, and other essential public services. In these settings, connectivity has a multiplier effect: it makes every investment in education, health, and livelihoods more effective.

Yet scaling connectivity requires a fundamentally different approach.

Today, markets are still not working efficiently. In many African countries, broadband costs between three and five times the global median. Connectivity exists but not at prices that work for schools, communities, or families.

The challenge is not only infrastructure. It is how connectivity is financed, procured, and delivered.

Too often, last-mile connections – especially for schools – depend on fragmented, short-term tenders, with little coordination or predictability. This limits competition, discourages investment, and prevents scale.

What is needed is a shift: aggregate demand across countries, create predictable long-term conditions, and use competition to bring prices down.

This is the logic behind a new, continent-scale procurement approach. By pre-qualifying suppliers across multiple countries and awarding Long-Term Agreements through competitive processes, governments gain a ready-made mechanism to procure connectivity at scale — at lower cost and with greater accountability.

For governments, this means embedding connectivity into national strategies and aligning financing accordingly.
For the private sector, it is a clear call to engage and deliver solutions at scale.

This is market shaping in practice – structuring supply and demand so that connectivity works for children.

In Kenya, this approach is already delivering results. By introducing competition and changing procurement, the cost of connecting schools has fallen by around 60 per cent. What was once unaffordable is now within reach.

If scaled, this model could connect 500,000 schools and reach more than 150 million children across Africa.

Every month of delay leaves 1.3 billion children further and further behind,  not just in access, but in opportunity.

Kaan Çentintürk is the CIO and Director of UNICEF Information and Communications Technology Division