Classmates for Africa

By Leon Engelbrecht for Intel
Johannesburg, 04 May 2007

Intel's Classmate PC and its AMD rival, the XO or Children's Computer, will be deployed in Africa's education sector, from as soon as the second half of this year.

Both companies plan to sell low-cost notebooks to emerging markets, focusing on providing every child in every school with a theft-proof laptop.

"We would like a fair amount of these units out in the market by the end of next year," says Intel SA director of public sector Sam Mensah. He defines that figure as 100 000 globally by December 2008.

Local assembly, through a range of original equipment makers, is planned in SA, Kenya and Nigeria.

Mensah says by Nepad's count, there are at least 600 000 schools in Africa, showing the size of the potential market.

Intel has tested Classmate in Nigeria since September and the results have been "amazing", Mensah says. In the first term, the students' results improved 24% compared to a control group, and in the second term, their results were 27% better than their peers.

"This means we have taken a bunch of 'C' students and turned them into 'A' students."

There are also benefits on the soft side, with truancy down in the class concerned and formerly disruptive students now attentive.

In pedagogic terms, technology such as Classmate and XO finally makes possible outcomes-based education for children, enabling a sensible progression from learning-by-rote, he adds.

Built-in security

Mensah says previous efforts to computerise schools have been fraught with security and infrastructure problems, with more spent on securing the machines and their infrastructure from theft than on the machines themselves or on the content.

For the Nigerian trial programme, not a cent was spent on renovating the school or its classrooms, barring the provision of extension cords to allow for the recharging of batteries.

Theft remains a huge problem with government education IT projects and steps to prevent this "are very important in an environment like SA," Mensah says.

For that reason, built-in security renders the machine useless if it has not communicated with its base station (at the school) within a 48-hour period. This allows children to take the PC home at the end of the day, and over weekends, but should deter criminals from taking the machines off children for resale, the more so since Classmate is aimed at children aged six to 12.

However, a local assembler says both Intel and AMD's plans are fraught with difficulties, least of which is pricing. "I think the project, globally, is still young," says a CE, who asked to remain anonymous.

"Logistics in Africa are not as simple as they think." The CE also queried the use of wireless technology in poor countries lacking both the infrastructure and the resources to install such technology.

He adds that neither chipmaker has yet brought the price down to even near the figures they bandy about, $100 in the case of AMD and about double that for Intel. As a result, the products as they currently stand, are not much cheaper than regular 14-inch entry-level notebooks, he notes.