A Canadian solution to Africa's digital divide

Following on from the successful Canadian model of reusing government PCs in schools, Computers for Schools Kenya has become one of the leading African run and owned non-governmental technology organisations. The organisation takes donated PCs from Western countries and distributes them to schools and colleges in Kenya which cannot afford the prices charged for new machines.

The Canadian Computers for Schools initiative was set up for the purpose of making sure old PCs from government and other organisations could be easily redistributed down the chain to schools, libraries and other learning organisations. So far the initiative has delivered about 750,000 computers.

Computers for Schools Kenya (CFSK) has survived so far with little or no aid from the Kenyan authorities, despite the importance of technology to improving education standards, and it will celebrate its fifth birthday this month. Alongside expanding its remit from merely donating machines to providing an IT curriculum and teaching materials for schools, the organisation has also innovated new ways to extend the life of CRT monitors.

As part of a special report into technology developments and recycling in Africa, ZDNet.co.uk caught up with the organisation's chief executive, Tom Musili.

So how does CFSK actually work?
We receive computers from donors and our partners and we have a workshop where we refurbish them. To each school we give 20 to 25 computers. The reason for this is that one class has about 40 or 50 students, so we want to have about two students per computer.

What we want the students to have is what is taught in Europe, the US and elsewhere — to provide them with basic literacy

Tom Musili, Computers for Schools Kenya

We have local partners and overseas partners, such as Computer Aid International. Computer Aid has been a partner of ours since 2004 and, to date, they have given almost half of what we have given to schools, which is over 10,000 computers. We also have to maintain all these machines and train the teachers on how to operate them — especially the managers and principals of the schools. We have also gone a step further to deliver content and learning materials — although that is a preserve of the government, but, since there are none in existence, we had to do that.

What sort of materials do you provide?
We have materials that teach basic skills, such as how to use Word and Excel and PowerPoint, but we have also gone a step further with software that demonstrates to the school's managers how to use the computers to manage their records, et cetera, for running the school.

The government is not doing it?
The government is providing information, but it has not been reviewed recently and it's an old curriculum. What we want the students to have is what is taught in Europe, the US and elsewhere — to provide them with basic literacy, as secondary education is an access point to higher learning and to the job market.

What backing has the industry given you for the ICT learning materials?
We have good backing from our corporates. The Safaricom [Kenyan mobile provider] Foundation is giving us backing for supplying phones and computers. But, when it comes to developing a curriculum, we had to take it on ourselves, hoping that at some point the government will ratify and take it over, because that is not our mandate.

Have you benefited at all from the Microsoft student innovation suite that the company launched in April?
We haven't seen it land yet and [we are] not really aware of whether they might be interacting with the government and we are not privy to that. So it's slightly confusing [compared to] the original situation, where we just dealt with Microsoft directly.

What other schemes do you have in place here?
We have a department called "Special Projects" that looks at tasks such as how to convert CRT monitors into televisions. We have gone further — to use a very old Pentium II as a TV, a radio and a computer. That is a recent innovation and we are still perfecting it. That department is also where we do thin client: where we have one server machine and use other older machines as dumb terminals. That has worked very well and is one way of prolonging the life of these old machines.

So you use the Pentium IIs as dumb terminals?
Yes, even Pentium Is would work very well.

How come you have Pentium Is and Pentium IIs in your facility — I thought you did not accept anything below a Pentium III?
It is CFSK's policy not to accept anything less than a Pentium III or a Pentium IV, but we don't give up on a machine when it's older. We still have other innovative ways of making them last longer. You will remember that schools often have older machines — Pentium Is and Pentium IIs. When we go in with a replacement newer machine, we take the older ones back. Some we prolong the life of — the Pentium IIs by converting them to thin clients. Others, we scrap them and we are able to sell the metal and plastic locally. What we are not able to get rid of is the CRTs and the motherboards and other electronics...