Survey of ICT and Education in Africa : Guinea-Bissau Country Report

Abstract

This short country report, a result of larger Information for Development Program (infoDev)-supported survey of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in education in Africa, provides a general overview of current activities and issues related to ICT use in education in the country. Guinea-Bissau is a small country of fewer than two million inhabitants. Civil war in the late 1990s destroyed its infrastructure and economy and displaced hundreds of thousands of its population. Recent multi-party elections installed a civilian regime in 2005. A key priority of the new government is infrastructure reconstruction, including those related to education, telecommunication, and electric power. The government of Guinea-Bissau has obtained assistance from the African Development Bank and the World Bank to rehabilitate some of the destroyed infrastructure. That said, the state of telecommunications is quite poor and the electricity supply is sporadic.