Above: Illustration by cifotart/DepositPhotos.

Gerelyn Terzo of Sharemoney offers an overview of Brazil’s response to Covid-19 with an emphasis on how technology helped the country to manage the crisis.

While many countries around the world are getting the COVID-19 pandemic under control, Brazil isn’t out of the woods yet. The South American country is dealing with a new variant of the disease, known as B.1.351, which is preventing life from getting back to normal for Brazilians, including schoolchildren.

However, there will now be at least one less hurdle for kids receiving a proper education, as the government has recently passed a bill that will secure free internet connectivity across households and public schools where millions of Brazilian children attend.

This new bill comprises a set of proposals designed to bridge the gap between Brazil’s students and teachers who would otherwise struggle to have access to the internet during the pandemic. It earmarks USD 690 million from the government’s Universal Access Fund (FUST), which was designed for telecom investments, and will go toward continuing lessons for more than 18 million students and 1.5 million teachers.

Those affected will receive mobile internet plans and tablets as part of the measure. The funds will go toward fixed broadband services when that option is less pricey or if mobile internet is not available.

In particular, the bill focuses on providing internet connectivity to the students and teachers of schools that belong to the country’s Unified Registry for Social Programs of the Brazilian government, or Cadastro Único.

It also places a heightened urgency on students who attend schools in indigenous and quilombola communities. In addition, schools that could not operate without the funding will be high on the list. Brazil has prioritized the funds in the following order:

• High school students
• Elementary school students
• High school teachers
• Elementary school teachers

The bill was not a slam dunk with some members of the Brazilian government and has been making the rounds for months. After being approved by the Chamber in December 2020, the internet bill went to the Senate where it received the green light in February. That’s when President Jair Bolsonaro vetoed the bill before the Brazilian Congress moved to overturn that, allowing the measure to be confirmed by the Senate. President Bolsonaro argued at the time:

“[The] measure faces a legal obstacle for not presenting an estimate of the respective budgetary and financial impact, and increases the high rigidity of the budget, which makes it difficult to comply with the fiscal target.”

Internet Dynamics

Despite the fact that Brazil leads the Latin American region for internet connectivity, the pandemic has exposed vulnerabilities in the technology landscape, especially for the poorest of families. For example, almost three-quarters of households in the country have internet access, but some 20 million are considered “digitally excluded for various reasons,” according to the Brazilian Internet Steering Committee, an internet regulatory authority in the country.

About one-third of Brazil’s digitally excluded population say they’re just not interested in going online, while close to 25% blame a lack of tech knowledge, and slightly more than one quarter of them say it’s too expensive. More than one-third of poverty-stricken households in Brazil’s northeast region and 45% of people living on minimum wage have no internet access.

While web access in the South American country could be more widespread, Brazil is the No. 5 country in the world for internet penetration, surpassed by Indonesia, the United States, India and China.

Brazil’s internet governance model is considered a model for Latin America and beyond as the country has been an advocate for privacy rights. Brazil is the country in which former NSA contractor Edward Snowden unsuccessfully sought political asylum in exchange for sharing details about the agency spying on the Latin American country and its president.

European Connection

Considering Brazil’s internet prowess, other parts of the world are looking to Brazil to bolster their own internet connectivity. For example, Portugal and Brazil have partnered for a project that will connect Europe and South America to deliver high-speed internet through a 6,000 km cable under the sea.

That platform goes from Portugal’s Sines to the city of Fortaleza in Brazil and is the maiden direct high-speed cable connection between the two continents. The multi-phase project, which is called EllaLink, will also have connections to Lisbon, Marseille, Barcelona, Fortaleza, Sao Paulo & Rio de Janeiro. EllaLink is designed to bolster Europe’s role for global internet traffic.

Asian Connection

Brazil is also involved with a 13,180 km submarine fiber-optic cable connection that will link South America to Asia in the first of its kind connection. The USD 388 million project is designed to bolster connectivity for 270 million internet users in Asia. Brazil only recently joined the project, which is being led by Chile and extends to New Zealand and Australia, giving it the proximity to connect with Asia.

Brazil’s involvement in the cable project is viewed as key to the success of the project, which has also signed on Argentina as a partner. Brazil, Argentina and Chile alone comprise 80% of internet activity in South America. Other potential partner countries include Paraguay, Uruguay and Bolivia.

Internet of Things

In addition to branching out with other governments, Brazil is also looking to the private sector to raise its profile for internet-related development. To that end, Brazil has partnered with venture capital investors for a USD 45 million fund to back startups operating in the Internet of Things (IoT) space.

The fund, which was launched by Indicator Capital, the Brazilian Development Bank (BNDES) and Qualcomm Ventures LLC, will focus on allocating “agriculture, health, industry 4.0, smart cities and mobility.”

The fund will be overseen by Indicator Capital, which catapults the firm to the biggest VC manager in the Latin American region. Demand for the fund was high, as evidenced by the funding total, which is about twice the original target amount.

Conclusion

Internet connectivity has emerged as the biggest hurdle to remote learning in Brazil, according to a study at the start of the pandemic. Other challenges include students having difficulty with the material, a lack of access to devices and an apathy toward learning. Brazil, however, has an even bigger problem on its hands.

As Brazil grapples with getting control over the pandemic, the country continues to lose people to the disease amid a death toll that hit 207,000 in the three-month period leading to June of this year. The death toll extends to the country’s youth, where in São Paulo the number of cases has been on the rise since the end of last year, including many children who are not even old enough to attend school yet.

About the author

Gerelyn Terzo is a staff writer at Sharemoney, a money remittance service that is passionate about improving the lives of immigrants. The granddaughter of an Italian immigrant from the town of Teora whose first steps in the U.S. were on Ellis Island, Gerelyn resides in New Jersey.