#Gambia: How the internet is making #COVID19 measures difficult
Up until the afternoon of March 17, The Gambia had not recorded a case of Coronavirus even with our bordering country, Senegal, being on its 24th case at that time. However, this took a turn on the evening of March 17 when the President of The Republic of The Gambia, Adama Barrow appeared on the national broadcaster to announce measures that the government will take to avoid an outbreak in The Gambia. Some of these measures included the closure of all schools, suspension of all travels of public officials and workshops, both national and international as well as public gatherings and mandatory quarantine for all incoming travellers with effect from March 18 for a period of 21 days. Quite proactive, right? Well, that was not the case. This statement was shortly followed by the Minister of Health confirming the first #COVID19 case in The Gambia. The case was of a patient who traveled to The Gambia from the United Kingdom.
Less than two weeks after the first statement, the President appeared on television again to announce other measures after the cases had risen to a total of four. This was also after it was reported that incoming travellers fled the hotel where the government had placed them to fulfil the 14 days required quarantine as a measure for incoming travellers. The new measures made on March 27 also included scaling down government and private workers, halting of non-essential businesses and imports, and reduction in the number of people allowed in public transportations at a time to half — that is if your vehicle was registered to transport 10 passengers at a time you would now be expected to carry five.
As of today April 29, The Gambia had recorded a total number of 10 #COVID19 cases, one active case, one death, and 8 recoveries. However, there had been no responses declared for all the socio-economic or even gendered issues that may arise as a result of the effects of these measures particularly to students, women entrepreneurs, workers, and wage income earners.
What closure of schools means for students of the University of The Gambia (UTG)
In light of #COVID19, the closure of all schools in The Gambia means a complete hitch for a university with low digitalised systems. For a university that graduated its first batch of students in 2008, the university up until 2018 still required students to manually register their courses, and for students to print and physically handover copies of lecture notes and assignments for submission. While universities around the world took at least a week to get their classes online, the strain of resources means that students of UTG had to wait for over a month to start their online classes. Yet, there are great difficulties that all stakeholders are currently facing due to this switch and all these arising issues show the lack of diversity and progress in the way we are currently learning. In the back and forth of trying to understand what works in The Gambian context, there is also an opportunity to examine how technology can be improved in the operation of the only public university in The Gambia and made available for students to utilize within the school premises.
The university management through the Ministry of Higher Education, Science, Research and Technology made an arrangement with some GSM operators in The Gambia to provide data worth 1.5GB monthly to all registered students purposely for academic research. This is in addition to the use of Google G-Suite for free without any data charges. However, over the past weeks, students have fretted about receiving less than the amount of data promised by the school from a particular GSM operator, some objected to the Google G-Suite being free of charge while others protested of not receiving data at all. Due to these factors, the start date of online lectures was moved further to another week. At the moment, the students union had spearheaded a campaign to boycott a certain GSM operator that failed to fulfil their part of the bargain causing students to miss ongoing online lecturers.
There is a lack of data to prove how many students of the university are self-funded, have jobs or are likely to be employed after completion of a degree, this would have been important in determining how access to internet data can affect different students based on their privileges and the availability of resources. On average, I used to spend about $12 a week on data cost, which is about 10% of extremely slow internet of my monthly income. The state of the internet in The Gambia makes it extremely difficult to work online and manage technology in education and other sectors. However, alongside the issues of consumption, internet access is also an issue in terms of usage and the location of students. Students complained that because they moved back to their local communities, they are finding it difficult to get access to online classes due to the poor internet services available in those parts of the country. The response was of course to ask these students to relocate to the urban areas as they would have been to physically attend lecturers. This is a poor response to the challenges that these students are facing during a pandemic because 1. Students are not physically attending lectures and; 2. students rights to education should not be hindered by their residency. Nonetheless, it is also the only response that could be given because the problem of internet cost and bandwidth is beyond UTG.
Taking classes online also means that students will face other digital issues when they need to upload assignments, presentations, and even research using the internet outside of streaming the actual online classes. I now use wifi, and still, my struggle is the same with a lot of students. Even though wifi reduces the cost of data, it does not save you from the terrible internet when it comes to downloading, uploading, and other internet usages different from WhatsApp calls and scrolling Twitter feeds. So as we respond by taking classes online so students do not miss out on a whole semester, it is also important to keep into consideration the availability or lack thereof of resources, presence of factors surrounding the internet and how these can affect the outcome of teaching and learn through the technology tools being used to deliver.
My deadlines depend on the internet and availability of power
Universities are not the only institutions going digital due to the pandemic. In the last three weeks, my workplace asked everyone to work from home for a period of two weeks. This decision has however been revised and staff are required to work from home only two days a week. While this decision may lack rationale, as the idea of this measure is to control and avoid infection, this pandemic has made institutions be even warier of productivity and performance rather than the health and well being of their staff. For a government that does almost all of its work manually and who values physical interaction over digitalisation, there is an unfound basis of staff not likely to execute tasks when working from home. The work-from-home decision also proves the many procedures in our workspaces that could be less tedious if online tools are used, even post the pandemic. It is also demonstrating the lack of empathy, compassion, and recognition of the effects that the lockdown decisions may have on staff in The Gambia.
Staff are expected to meet deadlines and work at the pace that they normally would without providing them with internet or additional allowances for it. They are also inconsiderate of the anxiety that comes with waking up every day during a pandemic and staying up late everyday to meet deadlines and how the constant power supply cuts affect the delivery of work. This is also a good time to review workplace policies that protect women as mothers and their additional child/family care responsibilities during these times might be overlooked.
While technology does not necessarily delay productivity, the state of the internet in The Gambia and the pre-existing obstacles — cost, irregular power supply, and poor network — surrounding its usage can make it extremely difficult to produce work as one would do when these obstacles are absent. So it places an additional burden on staff who have to battle the poor internet while they also try to meet their deadlines, which means that the work-from-home measure is making it extra hard for them to manage expectations as opposed to what supervisors assume — that it is more convenient to them.
Who do we hold accountable
Government of The Gambia through its State-Owned Enterprise, Gamtel controls and provides internet to other providers while the cost is determined by the Public Utilities and Regulations Authority. Even though I am not sure what the role of The Gambia Competition and Consumer Protection Commission is, it is very unclear on who to keep accountable for the general regulation of the internet speed and cost in The Gambia by its providers. Gambians deserve to consume the data they are paying for considering the standard of living of the population and how technology has rapidly become necessary in all sectors. Arguably, people’s right to education and favorable conditions when we work from home is being obstructed by poor internet and even more so by the fact that there is a lack of clarity in who to keep accountable for internet governance.
