A small green and white laptop computer could revolutionize education for children across the developing world. In eight countries, including Rwanda, Pakistan and Brazil, the One Laptop per Child (OLPC) is launching and distributing the mini computer to millions of elementary-age children. Matt Keller, OLPC director of Europe, the Middle East and Africa, presented the laptop to IFAD staff on Thursday 11 October 2007.

A team headed by Professor Nicholas Negroponte at MIT designed the innovative laptop, which was inspired by the belief that better education is the starting point for improving living conditions in poorer countries. The team’s mission was to develop a durable, low-cost, low-maintenance computer that would be a unique learning and teaching tool.

"Education happens to be a solution to all of the problems associated with poverty," says Matt Keller. "The benefits for children and adults in remote rural areas promise to be enormous."

The new laptop is robust, lightweight, powerful and partially waterproof. Its battery, recharged with solar power and a hand crank, can last for up to 6 hours of heavy use or 24 hours of reading. The monitor can be used in bright sunlight and the computer is dust-resistant. It was previously known as the US$100 laptop, but it now costs about US$150 to manufacture. Its low cost allows distributors to achieve 'saturation', giving a laptop to every child over a large area.

Keller acknowledges a problem, recognizing that adults will want to get their hands on the children’s laptops. The computer is designed for little fingers, and children will be the ones who are taught to use it. But Keller anticipates that the laptop will prove useful for the whole family. The benefits of helping remote rural communities stay in touch with markets and obtain other information vital to production and sale, are evident.

In the developed world, potential customers are queuing up to buy the laptop. Through the Get One and Give One promotional campaign starting in November, for US$399 customers in the United States of America and Canada can buy a laptop for themselves and give one to a child in a developing country.

Exploration, experimentation and self-expression

Perhaps the greatest innovative feature of the new laptop is the concept of learning that it embodies. It communicates through a peer-to-peer wireless 'mesh' network that links a community of computers and requires only one Internet linkage to keep all the others connected.

"The laptop encourages children to be creative," says Keller. "And it gives them the opportunity to become computer-literate, in contrast to traditional teaching methods where the teacher is in charge."

For people in remote rural areas these features amount to a communication breakthrough. Children in the same neighbourhood will be able to chat together, share information on the web, videoconference, make music together, play collaborative games and read e-books. The laptop can be transformed into a mobile school, part of a moveable learning and teaching environment.

Children don’t need to be able to read and write to use the laptop. They learn constructively by working with one another and becoming active participants in a learning community. Together, they can explore and discover what this little green and white machine can do.

The first countries to sign up for large-scale deliveries of the mini computer are Argentina, Brazil, the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, Nigeria, Pakistan, Rwanda, Thailand and Uruguay. The governments of these countries will distribute millions of laptops to schoolchildren.

Through the laptop, the children will become more than just the owners of a cutting-edge computer. They will be connected to a vast amount of information previously unavailable to them. The possibilities that will open up to them are limitless.

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