Despite the Ministry of Education being mandated to promote the use of information and communications technology (ICT) across all levels of education, just two percent of public primary schools are offering such lessons, it has emerged.
Ministry of Education 2023/24 Malawi Education Statistics Report has since attributed the situation to lack of investment in ensuring more public primary schools offer ICT lessons at a time the world is moving towards a digital economy.
Malawi’s National ICT Policy gives the Ministry of Education a mandate to facilitate acquisition and utilisation of ICT skills in primary, secondary and tertiary institutions to improve access, quality and delivery of education.
This is also the situation despite the country’s long-term development blueprint, the Malawi 2063, putting an emphasis on ICT, which is under one of its enablers, to steer the country towards a self-reliant nation by 2063.
Part of the report reads: “There is a need for more investment in this area to increase the number of schools offering ICT lessons and connected to the internet considering that we are living in a digital era.”
Statistics in the report show that as of December 2024, there were 5 919 public primary schools, with only 172 offering ICT lessons.
The current public primary school enrolment is 5.2 million.
Phalombe District has 21 public primary schools offering ICT lessons followed by Karonga and Blantyre City with 16 primary schools and Lilongwe City comes third with 15.
Ntcheu District has 12 public primary schools offering the ICT lessons followed by Lilongwe Rural West with 11, Lilongwe Rural East with 10 then Kasungu and Mchinji with seven each, and Balaka and Chikwawa with six each.
Neno and Salima each have five public primary schools offering the ICT lessons.
Mzimba South, Mulanje and Blantyre Rural have four public schools each offering ICT lessons while Zomba Rural, Mzimba North, Mangochi, and Chiradzulu have three each and Dedza, Dowa, Machinga, Mzuzu City and Nkhotakota each have two schools.
Nsanje District has one public primary school offering ICT lessons while Chitipa, Likoma, Mwanza, Nkhata Bay, Ntchisi, Rumphi, Thyolo and Zomba Urban have no public primary schools offering the ICT lessons.
In an interview on Wednesday, education expert Limbani Nsapato said it is sad ICT lessons are limited at primary school level, especially when government has adopted a policy of expanding and promoting innovation and creativity as its foundation learning programme.
But Ministry of Education spokesperson Mphatso Nkuonera said there are various projects being implemented to expand ICT access in public primary schools and beyond.
Nkuonera said government expects that by 2029, all public primary schools will be equipped with tablet-enabled learning infrastructure and will be running tablet-enabled learning.
