evidoria

← Back to browse

Good practice Imported

Better Connections Program

Qatar · Doha · See the Qatar profile · See the Doha profile

Evidence: Descriptive / self-reported Top 54% 72/100 · Ask Evidence Copilot about this practice

A Qatari public-private partnership installed 1,927 free computer/Wi-Fi facilities in migrant worker housing, distributed 20,000+ refurbished computers, and used volunteers to help ~1.5 million low-wage migrant workers gain basic ICT and online-safety skills.

1,927
ICT/Wi-Fi facilities installed in worker accommodation
1,500
Original facility target
20,000+
Refurbished computers distributed
~1.5 million
Migrant worker beneficiaries reached (by 31 July 2021)
Better Connections Program

Details

Maturity
Discontinued
Promoter
Ministry of Transport and Communications (Qatar)
Period
2017-2021
Keywords
migrant workers, digital literacy, device refurbishment, community wifi, ICT access, public-private partnership

Context

Qatar's migrant workforce makes up roughly 90% of the country's residents but is often excluded from digital and social life by isolation in labour-camp accommodation.

Activities

Launched on 31 July 2017 by Qatar's Ministry of Transport and Communications, Ministry of Administrative Development, Labor and Social Affairs, Microsoft Qatar and Vodafone Qatar, the programme installed ICT facilities directly inside workers' accommodation compounds, each equipped with ten refurbished computers and a Wi-Fi modem, alongside training delivered by volunteer 'digital champions' — migrant workers themselves trained to cascade basic ICT and online-safety skills to their peers in shared languages.

Results

Against an original target of 1,500 facilities, the programme built 1,927, distributed more than 20,000 refurbished computers, and reports having reached roughly 1.5 million migrant worker beneficiaries by its formal conclusion on 31 July 2021. The headline figures are corroborated independently by both the UN's SDG Partnership Platform and Qatar's own Ministry of Transport and Communications.

Conclusions

Independent human-rights reporting on Qatar's kafala labour system (Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International) has repeatedly criticised weak enforcement of migrant worker protections such as wage theft and restricted job mobility; the Better Connections Program improves digital access and skills for this population but does not itself address those underlying structural labour-rights issues.

Implementation

Implementation detail (cost, timeline, staffing, conditions for success) is not yet available for this practice.

Commonly funded by

National / regional programmes

Indicative funding routes for practices of this type — always check each programme's current calls and eligibility rules.

Do you run this practice? Claim it — verified implementers get a public contact pathway and can propose corrections.

Data sources

Where this practice's information was retrieved from, and when.

Attachments

Similar practices you may find useful