

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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Hexayurt
Technological and Development Support for the Global Poor

Socially responsible technology development projects aimed at stabilizing and
then improving the conditions of the global poor can easily be created from
America's scientific and technical base. Many projects already exist, such as
the One Laptop Per Child initiative, but these projects are seen as stand-
alone initiatives, rather than parts of a coherent policy approach to the
developing world.

Target areas could include global access to clean water through simple
technologies like solar water pasteurization, development of new appropriate
technology power systems, low cost basic medical technologies and so on.

The close analogy to the Air-support-only defensive pacts is that the US would
take responsibility for developing and testing these technologies, but would
only make the designs available free of charge - essentially providing design
and laboratory services, and leaving nations, NGOs and individuals to
capitalize the designs and handle resource distribution. This keeps costs
down, and makes clear where US responsibility ends, which is an important
consideration when considering how to reach outside of our borders on non-
military levels.

Another critical area is farming. Roughly 50% of the world's population makes
a living by simple farming, mainly using manual and animal labor. One recent
study shows that modern organic agriculture techniques could roughly double
the food output of these farmers (Perfecto et. al. "Organic agriculture and
the global food supply.") Organic agriculture practices could be disseminated
using modern ICT. For example, a farmer could send an SMS message to the local
American embassy while standing in their field. The GPS data about their
location could be correlated with satellite imagery showing the condition of
their fields over the previous few years using techniques from precision
agriculture, a common first world farming practice. Individualized
recommendations could then be delivered. The cost per individual helped is
relatively small: the heavy work is done by computers. But the effect on
global food security, and on how the US is viewed by perhaps 50% of the
world's population is beyond price.

Similar approaches are possible in medicine. Carefully prepared information
packs, tailored to the health risks of each climate, geography and lifestyle
could be coupled with existing medical expert systems to provide very basic,
but still very useful, global health support at relatively low marginal costs.
Education is similarly an open door: primary and even secondary education
materials, vetted for accuracy and cultural appropriateness, and then
translated into many world languages could help countless people at very low
cost, and the more educated a population is, the less vulnerable they will be
to rumors and propaganda.

<http://guptaoption.com/2.long_peace.php>

==========================

There is a lot to be done with computers in the developing world.

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Create
This happens in Europe as well: Something Rotten in Hungary

In the end, Steve Ballmer is doing what any good CEO should be doing, by
recognizing where to best put his efforts to best sell his company to the
world. Clearly, Mr. Ballmer sees the young minds as being valuable enough to
invest 10 billion HUF (~40,000,000 Euro) in them. He's even has done something
even better for his share holders: he has figured how to make this investment
using someone else's money - namely, the EU taxpayers' money.

<http://www.theserverside.com/news/thread.tss?thread_id=49451>

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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.

(Posted earlier here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=208030> but
recommenting since the submission is now getting some traction)

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aurora72
Not directly related to the OLPC & Corruption issue but, something annoying's
happening in Turkey, too. (First of all, let me start by saying that our
country's got nothing to do with the english meaning of turkey and in contrast
to the popular impression, it's not a country of radical religion some
extremist groups of people notwithstanding)

After this brief introduction let me come to the main point:

Well the national telecommunication company of turkey (Turkish Telekom or Türk
Telekom) has began to offer its E-Mail services ,which is bundled free with
the ADSL subscriptions, on the Microsoft Windows environment! For years it has
been offered thru a fine and effectively working Java application.

Sadly, this change from Java to Microsoft occurred right after the turkish
telekom 's been privatized.

What annoys me is not only that the public services are being misused, it's
also that this new Outlook like E-Mail service apparently favors Internet
Explorer. This in turn makes people more dependent on Microsoft....

Just wanted to let you know...

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davetufts
Um... Children AREN'T supposed to use computers. It's not just the Nigerian
Minister of Education who believes this. Children should be using their hands,
developing coordination, developing social skills, and solving problems
through imagination. Ideally, they should be outside in the natural world.
Unequivocally, they should be away from all screen media.

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0x44
That's a false dichotomy. Time on the computer does not mean one mustn't spend
time outside or on other tasks.

~~~
davetufts
But time on the computer means there is less time to spend outside and less
time to spend on other tasks. Screen media simply isn't helpful for children
under high school.

~~~
0x44
You've made that assertion without any evidence. I was home-schooled for about
half of my K-12 education, part of that included time on the computer during
"school hours", and I was also given time on the computer after school - in
moderation. As a result, I have a distinct love of the things that is not
shared by my siblings who did not receive a similar education. So, since I am
a (hopefully) competent systems administrator and programmer, I think that my
experience on the computer as a child benefited me. I think that doing many
different things in moderation is far more valuable than sending your children
outside for every hour of the day.

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dotcoma
wrongdoing from Redmond? Now, that's strange ;-)

