ISLAMABAD: Pakistan is the least ready country for digital education among the developing member countries (DMCs) of Asian Development Bank (ADB).

The ADB in its report titled “Toward mature digital education ecosystems, the Digital Education Readiness Framework”, highlighted Pakistan’s major areas for improvement include its low internet connectivity (just 34.1 percent of households are connected), low fixed broadband speeds, high fixed line broadband costs, and low rural electricity access.

Relative to the model country, Uzbekistan is the most prepared country for digital education, followed by Indonesia. The least ready country is Pakistan, followed by Fiji.

Across all five pillars, countries perform relatively the lowest in the providers pillar, with six of the 10 DMCs in the “initial” category of readiness – Cambodia, Bangladesh, the Kyrgyz Republic, Mongolia, Pakistan, and Fiji (ordered from highest to lowest score).

The other four countries are in the “emerging” category of readiness (Indonesia, the Philippines, Viet Nam, and Uzbekistan). The difference between the model country’s normalized score and the highest-scoring country’s score is almost 45 points.

The 10 DMCs fare quite well in keeping their mobile broadband costs to a low percentage of GNI per capita, but fixed broadband costs differ across the board. While Cambodia, Indonesia, and Pakistan are the least affordable in broadband costs, Bangladesh, Mongolia, and Uzbekistan are the most affordable.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2023