When the Jubilee administration said that it had plans to issue laptops to all standard one pupils in Kenya as one of their campaign pledges, many people dismissed them.
It was like a dream and one of the misplaced priorities. The program, after the administration clinched power, failed to take off and at one time marred with scandals of funds being misappropriated.
Critics said that it was not wise to give laptops to standard one pupils and suggested that the program would have targeted at least secondary schools, starting with form ones, but the government, not wanting to be seen as not to be keeping its promises, held its ground.
And now there is some ‘light at the end of the tunnel’, allow me to use that cliché, as more than 350 primary schools are set to migrate to the ‘digital’ world. This is after the Ministry of ICT announced that it was expecting 5,000 laptops from China.
The government says that this will officially mark the commencement of free laptop program in the country. The government also hopes that by the end of the program, more than 20,000 pupils in all the public primary schools will have received the laptops. I don’t know whether the government is aware that the second term is over and the third term is short and whether they are planning for next year because the current class one will only interact with the gadgets for one term.
Read: Jubilee Scorecard- Part II: Uchumi Pillar
When I read about this news, what caught my attention was not the laptops but where they are coming from. What always comes in your mind whenever you hear about products coming from China? The Chinese products, especially electronics one, are all over the Kenyan market and we all know what they are good at. News that 5,000 laptops are going to come from China should get us worried about their quality and their durability. These are gadgets that are going to be handled by kids and they need something that world be durable but not things that will become obsolete after two weeks.
Another thing that is still troubling is the safety of the gadgets and the readiness of schools for the same. Many a times we have seen in the news where some of the primary schools are in a pathetic condition. In some schools, pupils are still sitting on stones as ‘desks’. Such schools actually need desks more than the laptops. There are many things that need to be addressed before implementing this program.