Posted
Wednesday, July 24
2013 at
22:09
In Summary
I am a hopeless technophile, so you can
understand why I am less troubled. I think if the laptops project was
only about school kids and laptops, then it wouldn’t be worth it.
The Kenya primary school “laptop project” has,
to my surprise, generated ten times more controversy than I would have
imagined it would.
Some critics say it is useless because many
schools don’t have electricity to power them. Others that teachers
should be trained and educational materials developed first, before the
project is rolled out. And there are those who say it is a gravy train
designed to give well-connected Jubilee sharks an opportunity to make a
killing supplying the laptops.
I am a hopeless technophile, so you can understand
why I am less troubled. I think if the laptops project was only about
school kids and laptops, then it wouldn’t be worth it.
Recently I found someone who agrees with me that
the real benefit of the project is entirely something else than even its
Jubilee supporters say.
He said precisely because many primary don’t have
electricity, for the project to succeed the government will have to
extend electricity to schools over the coming years. So one primary
benefit of the laptop programme is that more schools will get
electricity. This will allow more poor students to study at night, and
possibly improve the teaching of subjects like science as the schools
that have labs can now do more practical exercises.
Secondly, it will shake up private
schools. Right now many of the good primary schools have computer labs
and teach computer classes. They look good partly because most
government-owned have absolutely nothing.
However, once schools in the village begin
getting laptops, to differentiate themselves (or more accurately to
maintain the class divide) and justify charging high fees, the private
schools will have to upgrade their computer labs and improve their
computer teaching.
The overall effect is that computer literacy in
Kenya, and long-term the country’s global technology competitiveness,
will improve. It is these kinds of spin-off effects of the laptop
project, rather than the programme itself, which make it worth the
money. Thirdly, the laptop project is an important technology lottery. Say, as projected, 425,000 pupils in 6,000 primary schools next academic year get laptops.
Even if they are badly taught, and some of the
laptops are stolen, reprehensible as that is, all that is necessary is
for just ONE technology genius who becomes the next Bill Gates and
creates Kenya’s Microsoft to emerge from the mess. Only one, and the
investment will be good. The laptop project is valuable because it
increases the odds of that happening ten times over.
The one group of people who are acutely aware of where the game
is in this laptop thing is Kenyan publishers. They complained that it
was being implemented in ways that haven’t allowed them to develop or
compete in the e-education content market the project will require in
the future.
They do understand that at some point, laptops
will become like classroom chairs and desks. Schools will have more than
enough of them. The only thing that will keep changing, and can be
developed infinitely, is the e-learning content. The real big money in
the laptops thing therefore will be in the content.
The other folks who will make a killing are the
Kenyan and foreign technology companies, that have sensed that there are
billions of dollars to be made in connecting all those millions of
laptops. We could see the kind of expansion of broadband services even
the most starry-eyed optimists at Safaricom and Google had never dreamt
of. It could make firms like Safaricom five to ten times bigger in fewer
10 years.
At the East
African level, we have seen a similar project in Rwanda. Now with a
bigger and more developed market like Kenya entering the fray, we have a
veritable lab and mega guinea pig experiment for East Africa and
Africa. Though this is not what the Jubilee guys had in mind. What
happens with the laptop project in Kenya could therefore have far
reaching implications for how – and possibly even whether - other
African countries take the same route.
Finally with the connectivity millions of school
children will have in the coming years, they will free themselves from
the limitations of the imagination of their teachers and schools (and
bolster the bold teachers) with the myriad sources of incredible
knowledge available on the web.
And, think 15 years ahead, what kind of voters
will these laptop project graduates be? Someone has just let the
disruptive dogs out..
source: the citizen news paper
