OLPC Rwanda
| 2007 status: green | ||||
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Rwanda, under the strong conviction of president Paul Kagame, has committed to deploying 120,000 laptops across the country. This is partly supported by a collaboration between the wealthier city schools and the poorer rural schools. OLPC has also set up a major learning center in Rwanda, the Center for Laptops and Learning, which aims to serve the educational and learning needs of countries across Africa.
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Center for Laptops and Learning
The OLPC Learning Team, headed by David Cavallo, has been developing this center in Kigali since the summer of 2009, in partnership with the Kigali Institute of Science and Technology. They have helped with the deployments of the first schools in Rwanda, and are helping local students develop activities for a summer showcase in December 2009.
You can follow some of their work on the page for educators, and on the OLPC blog.
OLPC Rwanda in the news
Kigali, 3 January 2007: Rwanda Commits to One Laptop per Child Initiative
Kigali, 2 October 2008: Kagame launches One Laptop per Child, pg. 1, pg. 2
AllAfrica, 9 January 2009: Rwanda: OLPC - 100,000 Computers to Be Imported This Year
Dagens Nyheter (Swedish), 21 January 2009: [1] - This article describes how young students bring their XOs to the vicinity of the airport to pick up good WiFi connections.
About Rwanda
| Repubulika y'u Rwanda République Rwandaise Republic of Rwanda | |
| http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/29/LocationRwanda.png | |
| Capital | Kigali |
|---|---|
| Official languages | Kinyarwanda French English |
| Area | 26,338 km² |
| Population | |
| - 2005 estimate | 9,378,226 |
| - 2002 census | 8,128,553 |
| - Density | 320/km² |
| Education | |
| - Literacy (%) | 70.4 |
| - Compulsory Years | |
| - Compulsory Age | |
| - Pop. in School Age | |
| - Pop. in School | |
| GDP (PPP) 2005 est. | USD 13 billion |
| - Per capita | USD 1,500 |
| GDP (nominal) 2005 est. | USD 2 billion |
| - Per capita | |
| HDI (2004) | 0.450 (low) |
| Gini Index (1985) | 28.9 |
| Time zone | CAT (UTC+2) |
| Internet TLD | .rw |
| Calling code | +250 |
| More statistics... | |
Rwanda, the land of one thousand hills, is known for its natural beauty and warm people, but also a recent past of human tragedy and violence. The country has begun embracing information technology as their main strategy for economic and social development as a part of Rwanda's Vision 2020 -- the long-term country development plan that aims to transform the country into a medium-level income country by 2020. Even before OLPC started their project in the country, bringing computer literacy to primary school students was a goal of their society in order to prepare their country for this new economy. OLPC just added to their effort the technology needed for operate in Rwanda's limited electrical infrastructure and average primary school size of 1500 students and expertise in how to unleash the creativity of the children through the XO.
10,000 XO laptops have been donated through 2007's Give One, Get One program; 5000 have recently been deployed and are in use by students and teachers. The remaining 5000 laptops will be arriving in late 2008. Concurrently the Government of Rwanda is preparing to directly purchase a significant number of XOs.
The biggest strength of this project in the country is the incommensurable commitment of the people involved in the laptop initiative. From the Honorable President Paul Kagame, who recently stated their commitment to saturate the school in the country with XOs in the next year. Rwanda is enthusiastic and supportive, of making the initiative a success.
Many languages are spoken in Rwanda, including Kinyarwanda, Swahili, French, and English.
Statistics
Deployment details
| Primary Language | ,|x|Language spoken::x}} |
| Number of Laptops | Number of manufactured laptops::120000 |
| Keyboard Layout | Keyboard::OLPC English Keyboard |
| Build | ,|x|Software release::x}} |
| Date(s) Arrived in Country | ,|x|Has received laptops on date::x}} |
| School Server | ,|x|School server status::x}} |
| Deployment Status | [[Deployment status::5K laptops have arrived.
5K more coming in November, 2008. Schools will teach in English, French and Kinyarwanda. More arrived in May 2009, and another 100k are in production. No School Server planned Much of the deployment will be off net. 96% of primary schools don't have electricity, no server or wireless network in the moment, average of 1k students per school and 70 per classroom. Powerpoint Presentation, Bootstrapping OLPC deployment in Rwanda, from Juliano Bittencourt & Brian Jordan, members of the OLPC Learning Team, who assisted with this large-scale deployment.]] |