Sixty kilometres out of Mbombela, on a farm surrounded by forestry plantations in Schoemanskloof, sits MPC, a school serving rural communities my late father started in 1998 with donation money and a conviction that a child’s postal code should never decide their future.

I am one of its founding directors, and I have spent enough years now watching the school grow to say plainly: our biggest obstacle to preparing our learners for university and the world of work is not ambition, and it is not just money in the way people assume – it is bandwidth.

A parliamentary committee visited us about two months ago, and by their own account, they were pleasantly surprised by what they found. We are a school of real quality, tucked into the forest, farther out than most would expect a school of calibre, like this, to be.

South Africa’s recent connectivity debate, Starlink politics and all, has been playing out for months without a school like ours ever really coming up in it. It is a sign of how far outside the conversation rural-area schools in our position have been, and that is not ideal.

No Connectivity

We have unstable cellphone signal or often no signal at all, and no functional internet connectivity. Being this far out, our need for connectivity is twofold. Neither MTN nor Vodacom is willing to assist, despite several requests. This impacts our productivity, service offering, and security.

The first issue is MPC’s academic offering. Learners cannot do their homework without access to online research sources. A matric learner cannot apply to university, register for a bursary, sit a benchmark test, pull a past paper, or get to grips with the new artificial intelligence (AI) reality without it. Our teachers cannot mark on modern platforms or bring real-time research into a classroom. We currently teach the government curriculum, but we want to expand into the private Independent Examination Board (IEB) curriculum, partly because we sit within reach of both Eswatini and Mozambique. None of that is possible without reliable internet.

The school was specifically started to empower previously disadvantaged learners. The current situation is disadvantaging them in becoming the best they can be, due to our service offering being limited and their access to resources being hindered. The school is also further hindered, as we would want to expand our technology-based subjects and service delivery by incorporating more technology into the education process.

The second need is safety and security for our staff and learners on a farm where signal failure is constant. We are not sure whether communication is possible should, may we be spared, there be an emergency.

We want to continue being a school of excellence. But current structural connectivity limitations make this almost impossible.

Not Wealthy

I should be clear about what kind of institution is asking for greater action on connectivity, because we are not a wealthy private school. We run mostly on donations, and fees are kept deliberately low because affordability was the whole point of starting the school. A connectivity solution that takes years and millions of rands to build is simply not a solution our learners can wait for.

That is exactly why the answer has to be low Earth orbit (LEO) satellites, and why it has to be soon. Fibre is definitely not coming over these mountains anytime soon, and mobile infrastructure was never built for farms like ours. LEO connectivity, in my understanding, does not need any of that infrastructure.

Which is why I have watched South Africa’s debate on LEO satellite connectivity and licensing with interest and no small amount of frustration. Unlike other players, Starlink has already proven itself and has already helped improve rural education outcomes in the more than two dozen African countries where it is active. That truth deserves real consideration, no matter what views people may or may not hold about Elon Musk personally.

But more than any single provider, it is the scale of the need that should count for more. There are literally thousands of rural schools like ours across this country, and that number belongs at the centre of any consideration regarding satellite licensing. We need broadband access now, not two years down the line. Every day without the internet is another day that learners are kept back and severely disadvantaged. Other satellite options are years from offering what a normal school needs.

Empowerment

I am not asking anyone to abandon empowerment principles. Quite the opposite. I am asking that the policy mechanisms built to accommodate exactly these kind of issues, equity-equivalent investment among them, be used, because we have an educational crisis that can in part be addressed by affording all children, no matter their circumstances, access to reliable, fast, and affordable internet connectivity.

This is not about Musk, but about a proven service provider that is willing to invest in areas that need it — areas that will benefit greatly from Starlink’s wider equity-equivalence offering.

As I have said to anyone who will listen: it does not matter what colour a child’s skin is; what matters is whether they have the right connections and the opportunity to access the same opportunities that children in urban areas are given to compete. Politics or ideological battles should never outweigh how much children stand to gain from new technology and the opportunity it unlocks.

Louis Struwig is a director at MPC in Schoemanskloof, Mpumalanga.