This pilot study examines how intersecting differences – in gender, socio-economic status, rural/urban residences, and disability - shaped students’ experience of the shift to distance university education resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdowns in 2020-2021. Focused on three universities - Carleton University, (Ottawa, Canada), University of Nairobi, (Kenya, Mombasa campus), and University of Sierra Leone (Fourah Bay College, Freetown) - research teams based at each institution conducted surveys, interviews and focus groups with students to explore differences in students’ experience of remote learning.