

One Laptop per Child & Corruption: A Tale of 2 Cities - aitoehigie

The idea behind the OLPC project is quite laudable but in Africa, to be specific, in Nigeria, the project is being frustrated by corrupt government officials who it is rumored have taken bribes from Computer manufacturers who intend to introduce their ultra low cost PC's into the country and also subtle pressure from the "Red Devils from Redmond". Also, due to the gross ignorance of the Minister of Education who said this "Children are not supposed to use computers, only adults should, so we are planning to introduce compulsory computer education to universities and colleges". You might ask, what do african children need computers for, in the light of hunger, war and other things plaguing the continent, but i dont think this is so, technology can be used to leap frog the continent into rapid development, and also increase the standard of living of africans. I wish this to be taken as a petition to people of this forum to mount pressure on the Governments of 3rd world countries to do what is right.
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dskhatri
I am pretty damn sure the corrupt leaders in countries like Nigeria and Kenya
(where I was born and raised) will not be swayed by an online petition! Rather
than use this forum as a petition, you might consider leveraging the
intelligence and experience of this group to discuss the issue of the digital
divide and possibly offer suggestions as to how we could bridge it.

For example, as hackers and entrepreneurs we could work to develop an open
online app that could make it easier to introduce kids in developing countries
to CS and provide mentorship in some way. At MIT there was an program called
AITI (Africa Internet Technology Initiative) that sent students to Kenya,
Ghana and Ethiopia over the summer to teach programming to high school kids
there. What about a project that would provide some seed money to local
African entrepreneurs to setup educational internet cafes in communities
there?

It is a huge problem and would be really interesting to discuss the issue
further here.

