Digital Education in Kenya

During the 2014 general elections in Kenya, all presidential candidates made several promises to the Kenyan people so as to woo them into voting for them. The most innovative promise was one made by H.E President Uhuru Kenyatta, the current president of Kenya, was the provision of laptops for primary school students. While this project is yet to be implemented, it has drawn several views from all stakeholders; parents, teachers and people in the ICT community.
Most teachers especially those in rural areas are not computer literate hence a lot of time will be consumed teaching them how to operate them,moreover they will not be able to repair the devices when there is a breakdown or how to maintain them.

Most schools especially those in rural areas do not have access to power. Some have broken down classrooms while in some extreme cases learning occurs under a tree. For such cases, laptops are not really the main requirement since the schools need to be improved first.
Many critics argue that there are other pressing needs that must be addressed instead of spending money on purchasing laptops for every child. These include things like healthcare, employment and even the matter of enhancing the quality of education by hiring more teachers. Increasing teachers’ pay has also been suggested instead of laptop provision.Despite all this concerns in Kenya,Rwanda has managed to embraced a broader educational reformation policy from content and curriculum development to building classrooms and ensuring they have access to the national grid.

Just to go back in history concerning projects that were labelled for doom but were undertaken anyway and surprisingly went well to the surprise of many. When the US first thought of going to the moon, I am certain there were many people who thought it would be a time and resource wasting project.
However, they still went through with their project and they were able to create new technologies during the program. This notion of seeing the bigger picture of how technology will impact the country is what Kenya should incorporate in her endeavor for laptops. Of course it will be challenging to communicate it and get all interested parties on board, but it is worth it in the long run.

In conclusion, Kenya should definitely consider learning from the experience of Rwanda and borrow the best practices. Moreover, the nation should strive for a broad approach of handling the education issues. The good thing about the laptop project is that it has drawn the much needed attention to education issues in Africa and will hopefully create the incentive of seriously tackling the issues.
 

Source: Hope project