Expert Opinion: ‘The digital divide in early childhood education in rural SA is a social injustice’ – UP experts

By Dr Elmien Claassens, Department of Social Work & Criminology, Faculty of Humanities; Dr Kayla Willemse, Department of Early Childhood Education, Faculty of Education; and Professor Ronel Callaghan, LLITUP Research Unit, Department of Science, Mathematics and Technology Education, Faculty of Education, University of Pretoria.

In many boardrooms and tech hubs around the world, the fourth industrial revolution is spoken of as if it’s within everyone’s reach, while South Africa’s new Coding and Robotics curriculum is seen as proof that the Department of Basic Education is moving forward. But for a five-year-old in a remote village in the Eastern Cape or a corner of Limpopo, these priorities are simply words on a page. While we aspire to creating a nation of innovators, the reality is that a ceiling exists – one that locks rural children out of the future before they’ve even finished their first day of school.

On 20 February, the World Day of Social Justice will be commemorated under the theme ‘Empowering Inclusion: Bridging Gaps for Social Justice’. This is a call to tear down the walls that keep people in poverty by ensuring that everyone has access to equal opportunities. It’s about turning global promises into local realities, ensuring that gender, background or location no longer determines a person’s ability to thrive. 

But the digital divide in early childhood education isn’t just about who has a tablet and who doesn’t. It’s a profound social injustice in our society. It’s a systemic failure that denies rural children the right to develop computational thinking and the ability to solve problems logically and creatively. This skill is no longer a bonus; it’s as fundamental to life in the fourth industrial revolution as reading and writing are.

The numbers tell a heartbreaking story of South Africa’s reality. The Thrive by Five Index report (revised August 2022) states that about 65% of children in early learning programmes do not meet the developmental milestones that they should by age five. In rural areas, this is exacerbated by a massive infrastructure gap, with nearly 16 000 schools lacking a computer lab, let alone reliable electricity or internet access, according to a 2025/2026 Equal Education Law Centre review and the Department of Basic Education’s Education Facility Management System.

Research in robotics shows that when a child in a well-resourced urban preschool plays with a programmable robot, they’re learning to break big problems into small pieces, find patterns and create step-by-step solutions. Meanwhile, the rural learner may enter Grade R having never seen a digital interface. By the time the formal school curriculum kicks in, the urban child is miles ahead. South Africa isn’t seeing an achievement gap in matric results only – this gap is beginning to open in the sandboxes of early childhood development centres.

We need to stop treating tech in a child’s early years as a luxury reserved for some. If South Africa is serious about the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, then digital equity is a human rights issue. By denying a rural child exposure to the logic of technology, we are telling them that the modern economy isn't for them. But remedying this doesn’t mean just dropping expensive iPads into villages with no power. We’ve seen that fail before: devices are stolen, they break or there’s no data to run them. True innovation in South Africa must look different and unique – using unplugged options could be a solution.

Promoting social justice in education means being resourceful. Educators can teach the logic of a computer – the ability to think structurally – without a screen in sight. They can use physical games, storytelling and local materials such as beads or stones to teach algorithmic thinking. Ultimately, the core principles of coding and computational thinking are best mastered when they’re rooted in the child’s natural world of play and imagination. When a child learns to guide a friend through an obstacle course with specific commands or to identify a pattern in a traditional necklace, they’re building the same mental muscles needed for coding. This unplugged teaching approach could be a bridge, one that doesn't need a power grid or a fibre connection. 

Our biggest mistake is leaving children under five out of the national tech strategy. We can’t wait until Grade R to introduce these concepts, because the window of opportunity for most brain development has already begun to close. To fix this, a recalibration is necessary. One option is for the government and the private sector to support community-designed toolkits that use local materials to teach high-level logic. It’s crucial to provide support to rural early childhood practitioners, the unsung heroes of our villages. They should be empowered with the tools to teach the future with the resources available to them.

By combining the heart of social work, the hands-on learning of early childhood education and educational technology, rural children will be in a position to master 21st-century skills using the materials they find in their own communities; at the same time, digital access needs to be accelerated by the public and private sectors.

The digital divide is the new frontier of the struggle for equality and social justice in South Africa. We cannot call ourselves a developing nation if we allow this ceiling to remain in place. It’s time to invest in the early childhood years of our population, embrace unplugged innovation and ensure that every child, no matter their address, has the right to think, solve and create in the language of the fourth industrial revolution.