Chiamaka Ozulumba reports on how MTN’s Rural Connectivity programme is connecting 20 million Nigerians in underserved communities A report by the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), an affiliate of the United Nations, concerned with the functioning of global telecommunications, revealed that only 51 per cent of the world’s population was online as of 2019. The organisation had freshly launched its facts and figures report titled Measuring Digital Development: Facts and figures 2020 report, where it estimated that only 51 per cent of the population were online as of 2019. This suggests that in a population of over 7 billion people, about 3.7 billion were without connectivity to the Internet.