Uhuru’s laptop project most likely to turn Kenya into Africa’s ‘guinea-pig’

The Kenya primary school “laptop project” has, to my surprise, generated 10 times more controversy than I would have imagined.

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 before the project is rolled out.

And there are those who say it is a gravy train designed to give well-connected Jubilee sharks a chance to make a killing.

I am a hopeless technophile, so you can understand why I am less troubled. If the laptops project was only about school children 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 schools 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 them have computer labs and teach computer classes. They look good partly because most government-owned schools 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 teaching.

The overall effect is that computer literacy in Kenya, and the country’s global technology competitiveness, will improve. It is these kinds of spin-off effects of the 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 10 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 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 10 times bigger in fewer than 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.

What happens with the laptop project in Kenya could, therefore, have far-reaching implications for how — and possibly whether — other African countries take the same route.

Finally, with the connectivity, millions of school children will have in the coming years, freed 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...

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