Any strategy to improve the life trajectory and conditions of ordinary Yemenis has to account for Yemen’s flaw structural issues and digital barriers. With a flawed educational system, the internet is vital for Yemenis to acquire new knowledge learn and help themselves. However the country’s Internet infrastructure is slow expensive and available to only a few.
Data poverty means Yemenis are unable to connect with others, share ideas, learn or get support. Accessing knowledge or learning online learning is highly prohibitive: cost of data is high; content is in english or irrelevant; and content is not optimised. A few clicks and large size images and video or animation consumes massive amount of data.
At the beginning of 2022 over 73% of the population lacked access to the devices and Internet. In the rest of middle east over 75% have access
Yemenis pay the highest rates for access in their region of US$16 per gigabyte, which is 1500% higher than the average $1 paid in nearby countries.
Even free content costs for those with digital access there is a real cost when data quality is poor. The Internet is vast, unstructured resource. It's a major challenge to find content in Arabic, that is relevant, accessible and efficient to access. The quality of content can be poor and expensive to download
Digital literacy skills is a major impediment for many Yemenis to learn and develop. Accessing the Internet, learning and knowledge requires information and digital literacy. Many don't possess the skills use to search, process and manage information that is predominantly in english.
Join our Actionlabs in Greece and Turkey and share your knowledge and experience to design solutions. Our Actionlabs explore new ways of making progress on poverty issues in Yemen