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FM AMEMBASSY PRETORIA
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INFO RUEHOR/AMEMBASSY GABORONE 5362
RUEHSB/AMEMBASSY HARARE 3726
RUEHTO/AMEMBASSY MAPUTO 5951
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UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 02 PRETORIA 002217 
 
SIPDIS 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: PREL PGOV PHUM EAID SF
SUBJECT: LAPTOPS IN LIMPOPO: INTERNET COMES TO A SOUTH 
AFRICAN VILLAGE 
 
REF: HURISA/LIMPOPO CABLE 
 
 
------- 
Summary 
------- 
 
¶1.  MIT Media Labs' "One Laptop Per Child" initiative has 
arrived in South Africa, bringing portable computers and 
internet access to an initial few hundred school children in 
deprived communities of Soweto, Durban, and Limpopo.  U.S. 
college students from Indiana University raised $60,000 to 
buy 102 laptops, travel to Limpopo, build a wireless network, 
and distribute the PCs to fifth graders in Makgeng, a village 
without electricity, running water, or books.  The PCs are 
specially designed for children -- small, lightweight, 
waterproof, colorful -- and include software for web 
browsing, e-book reading, word processing, music composition, 
drawing, and real-time video chat.  While their parents and 
teachers may be hesitant, the twelve-year-olds have adopted 
them with alacrity.  End Summary. 
 
------------------------ 
Makgeng Village, Limpopo 
------------------------ 
 
¶2.  On October 3-4 poloff visited several sites (reftel) in 
the Capricorn District of Limpopo Province, one of South 
Africa's poorest regions of small rural villages and minimal 
infrastructure.  The landscape is reminiscent of the American 
Southwest -- arid, rocky, and red-soiled, where bony cattle 
graze on sparse brush grass amid aloe and cactii.  Dry earth 
makes subsistence farming difficult, particularly with wells 
gone dry and water brought in by tanker trunk.  Homes have no 
plumbing or electricity.  The main area employer is a lumber 
mill, processing pine lumber from man-made forests in nearby 
hills.  Unemployment and illiteracy are high, and many 
families live off government grants of child support funding 
and food parcels.  The village's new Maweshi Primary School, 
donated by a local Rotary Club chapter, is a solid building 
but empty of books.  Newspaper articles taped up on walls 
constitute reading material. 
 
--------------------------------- 
OLPC: PCs for Poor Kids Worldwide 
--------------------------------- 
 
¶3.  One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) is a nonprofit initiative 
launched by MIT Media Labs' Nicholas Negroponte to donate 
low-cost and rugged notebook computers to poor children of 
the third world.  (For details see http://laptop.org and 
http://wiki.laptop.org.)  The resulting "XO" machine is 
designed for kids: smaller and lighter than regular PCs, with 
a waterproof keyboard sized to small fingers, and a carrying 
handle.  Its bright colors prompt comparison to Fischer- 
Price toys.  The XO's screen resolution is sharp, however, 
and it comes loaded with an open-source operating system and 
software ranging from a web browser to e-book reader and 
puzzle games, as well as applications for word processing, 
drawing, and composing music.  A built-in video camera and 
wireless modem enable video chat with other users. 
 
¶4.  Private donors, largely in the U.S., have funded XO 
rollouts to schools in poor countries around the world, from 
Pakistan to Peru and Nigeria to Haiti since 2007.  Although 
Negroponte's original and publicity-grabbing goal was the 
"100-dollar PC", the actual cost achieved by OLPC came close 
at $200 per unit.  OLPC's "Give One, Get One" (G1G1) 
campaign, under which consumers pay $400 to buy one XO while 
donating a second, has sold more than 185,000 laptops, 
according to the OLPC user group site.  OLPC recently 
announced an alliance to sell XO's on Amazon.com from 
Thanksgiving of this year, to raise awareness and expand the 
G1G1 effort.  The program has this year come to South Africa, 
QG1G1 effort.  The program has this year come to South Africa, 
with implementations in Durban, the Soweto district of 
Johannesburg, and most recently Limpopo. 
 
----------------- 
US/SA Partnership 
----------------- 
 
¶5.  Limpopo's XO project was a collaboration between area NGO 
Thusanang Trust and volunteers from Indiana.  Thusunang runs 
a community center in nearby Haenertsberg focused on early 
child development, provision of childcare, parenting skills, 
and training of child care providers.  The NGO helped 
identify the schools to receive the XOs and provided language 
and logistical support to visitors.  The town lumber mill 
 
PRETORIA 00002217  002 OF 002 
 
 
donated internet bandwidth for a wireless network.  Indiana 
University's "One Here One There" 
(http://www.indiana.edu/ iuohot/) project promoting education 
in Africa raised $60,000 to fund 102 laptops, ancillary 
equipment (such as a generator), and travel costs for a dozen 
students to build the network in August while training the 
recipients to use computers for the first time.  The effort 
was entirely a private one, without USG or SAG involvement. 
 
------------------------- 
Demo: Window on the World 
------------------------- 
 
¶6.  School was on a holiday break on the day of our visit, 
but five students demonstrated their laptops for us.  Each 
child had been given one PC, as personal property labeled 
with his / her name and personalized with stickers, to take 
home each night and bring to school each morning to recharge 
via a gasoline-powered generator.  Most children live within 
range of the school's wireless network, so in the evenings 
they can share the PCs with family members.  Prior to 
distribution of the PCs, Thusanang staff conducted workshops 
carefully counseling children, parents, and teachers on their 
individual duties to safeguard XOs from theft, and no laptops 
have gone missing. 
 
¶7.  Fifth graders aged 11 to 13 were chosen as the PC 
recipients, because they were considered at an optimal stage 
to adopt new skills quickly with a sufficient knowledge of 
English.  (Thusanang's program officer commented that their 
verbal fluency in English improved noticeably during the 
Indiana students' three-week visit alone.)  They showed us 
the PCs' built-in video cameras, played with puzzles and 
music software, googled news of SA's newly selected 
President, called up world maps, and read us essays they had 
written on the computer.  After only a month of playing with 
the computers, they were still looking over one another's 
shoulders and copying new ideas. 
 
----------------------- 
Comment: A Leap Forward 
----------------------- 
 
¶8.  With these laptops the post-apartheid generation of young 
South Africans has the potential to leapfrog ahead of their 
parents and teachers, into the twenty-first century.  The 
kids showed off their PCs with a nonchalant can-do attitude 
typical of twelve year olds anywhere, giggling at their 
grandmother who found it all too confusing, and guiding her 
hands to show her how to type.  Their teachers are reportedly 
more hesitant with the PCs and have not yet integrated their 
use into group lessons.  In all likelihood the kids will 
advance quickly, leaving the adults behind -- which is in 
fact an ideal outcome in a nation desperately needing to 
shape a future sharply different from its past, accelerating 
expansion of education and its opportunities to a wider 
segment of society.  End Comment. 
 
LA LIME