Category Archives: OLPC Africa

OLPC projects in Africa

Nkubito Bakuramutsa on Rwanda’s school vision for the future

Posted on by
1

OLPC Rwanda lead Nkubito Bakuramutsa was interviewed recently by Matthew Stein of The Independent, about Rwanda’s plan for wiring and revolutionizing its school system, and how OLPC fits into it. He explains how his program ties into the national plan for schools, and the Rwandan goal to become a center for IT consulting in the region and the country developing internal expertise in all ICT needs.

He also notes that all of the Rwanda’s border posts will be connected directly to an Internet backbone by the end of this year, which is expected to reduce broadband costs by 90%.

Rwanda currently has 100,000 OLPC laptops in primary schools, and aims to provide them to all primary schools in the country over the coming 6 years. As Nkubito says, “We are investing in the future… we need all these skills to be brought into Rwanda, and primary school is really the foundation.”

Rodrigo visits Kagame, commends Rwandan progress

Posted on by
1

Rodrigo Arboleda spent four days in Rwanda last week with country lead Nkubito Bakuramutsa, visiting new OLPC deployments there and meeting with President Kagame and Rwandan ministers of education. He commended the Rwandan deployment’s progress so far, and the country on its focus on education as a “consolidation of peace and prosperity”.

Rwanda is the largest OLPC deployment outside of Latin America. 65,000 students and teachers have their own XOs, and another 100,000 are scheduled over the coming year.

New OLPC Rwanda site

Posted on by
Reply

OLPC Rwanda has recently spruced up their website, including a list of documents they use for running classes with XOs, and links to their active local blogs.   They’ve also started their own twitter stream – where you can follow Rodrigo’s current visit with Kagame and the national team.   You can sign up to volunteer from afar, and can leave them feedback via twitter, or on Julia’s or Rwagaju’s blogs.

 

Princeton-Engineers Without Borders collab grows in Ghana

Posted on by
Reply

Separate from the national program being rolled out in Eastern Ghana, Princeton University has a student-run Ghana School Library Initiative which is building a physical library in Ghana stocked with books and OLPCs.    This program started in 2008, and is one of three projects coordinated by the Princeton University chapter of Engineers Without Borders. They shared an update with East Coast OLPCers this Spring, and have been writing about their new milestones this summer, as the library nears completion.

 

After some work earlier this year to repair and update some donated XOs, children have started working with their own laptops at the EP Basic school in Ashaiman, Ghana, where the team is working. They recently completed a week of physical construction and two classes a day with the students.   The classes included working on educational activities with the children in Sugar, “to whet their appetites” to use the XOs more on their own.

Rwanda adds laptop security, gets new XO-1.5s

Posted on by
3

Rwanda is rolling out a software and firmware update to the students and teachers in their current schools, as they prepare to deploy a new batch of XO-1.5s as they approach their 100K milestone.   Project lead Nkubito Bakuramutsa gave a few interviews about the process, which started two weeks ago in southern Rwanda.

The security update may also give them a chance to reflash their current machines to XOOS 11.2, which has improved solar charging performance and overall power management along with many speed and interface improvements.

The planned expansion of their program will make Rwanda the largest OLPC deployment outside of South America, surpassing even the US and Mexico.

A trek across Africa to support students

Posted on by
Reply

Tamin-Lee Connolly plans to travel from South-to-North across Africa, ending in the middle-east, visiting schools and helping to deploy laptops along the way. She may even bring some of her own. Today she begins her travel by flying back to her native South Africa from Dubai, where she has been working, launching a year-long journey by land rover to visit 39 countries. She plans to volunteer for OLPC and perhaps other educational groups along the way, and has been talking to grassroots XO deployments to find those that would benefit from a visit – starting with the amazing team in Kliptown!

If you’re working in Africa, drop her a line on her travel blog, everything except the horn – perhaps you can meet up during her trek.