Skills Should Not Depend on Who Can Pay: A conditions-of-access framework for digital learning in Kenya and Sub-Saharan Africa: connectivity, affordability, inclusion and instructional quality

Purpose: Digital learning is promoted as a way around shortages of teachers, classrooms and money, yet the conditions under which it widens rather than narrows inequality are rarely stated. This paper develops and tests, against the published evidence, a conditions-of-access framework for Kenya and Sub-Saharan Africa. Design: A theory-building narrative review draws on international agency statistics, systematic reviews and randomised or quasi-experimental studies, interpreted through the capability approach and the digital-divide literature. Findings: Access fails at four sequential and cumulative gates: connection, affordability, use (language, skills, gender, disability) and learning. The binding constraint is increasingly use and cost, not coverage: in 2023, 27% of the Sub-Saharan population used mobile internet, 60% lived under coverage without using it, and 13% lived outside coverage. Data cost 5.8% of monthly income against a 2% target, women were 32% less likely than men to use mobile internet, and children with disabilities were 2.5 times more likely never to attend school. Technology improves learning when it delivers instruction matched to the learner's level and fails when devices are distributed alone. Implications: Seven design requirements and six propositions are derived for providers who wish access to be independent of the learner's ability to pay, together with a measurement agenda centred on the learner who is hardest to reach. Originality: The paper integrates the capability approach, the multi-level digital divide and experimental learning evidence into one operational framework, and applies it reflexively to a Kenyan provider.