More than two thousand public and private schools in Nairobi County are set to benefit from free unlimited high-speed fixed internet to be rolled out by fibre company, Zuku, in partnership with the Kenya Education Network and the County Government of Nairobi.

Dubbed WazEd, the project was launched over a year ago and is aimed at supporting the government’s initiative to provide free laptops to Kenyan schools.

Zuku’s parent company, Wananchi Group, has invested $2 million into WazEd during its 15 month pilot phase in 150 schools.

In a statement Wananchi Group chief executive officer, Richard Alden said the first three months of the pilot phase were used to roll out the fibre network while the remainder was used to evaluate the progress of the project.

“This Zuku Fiber project is a private-public partnership which is leveraging on Wananchi Group’s fiber infrastructure in delivering Information Communication and Technology (ICT) services to 2,715 schools in Nairobi, in line with the objectives of Vision 2030,” Alden said.

WazEd will be managed by Kenya’s National Research and Education Network in partnership with Kenya Education Network (KENET).

“The WazEd Nairobi Schools project shall also support teachers by providing them high speed access to open educational content and online capacity building courses on new methods of teaching and learning with technology,” according to KENET chief executive officer, Meoli Kashorda.

KENET will host the website of the umbrella schools association in addition to assiting with registration of the .sc.ke domain.