The State of FOSS in this Kenya

Did you know that according to the Ministry of Education, the more than 4,000 secondary schools in the country require a total of 80,000 computers? And out of these that more than 100 secondary schools, mostly in the rural areas, have already benefited from donations of some 2,200 computers to help boost their computer literacy.

In addition, there were 17,594 primary schools as at 2003, with unspecified number that have benefited from any computerization programmes. Try http://www.education.go.ke/Resources.htm

With such lack of coordinated information on what the progress is on the ground.

There are quite a number of CBOs that seem to be actively participating, such as the I Wanna Be There I Wanna Lend A Hand under the Computers for Schools Programme in Narok that seems to be advocating for use of the Bill Gate's OS rather than FOSS. Whatever the sucess or outcome of what they have done is not documented and will be hard to judge their success at this stage.


Yet from the look of things, with the NEPAD e-schools initiative being rolled across Africa, there will be the need to have all the disparate initiatives being undertaken, either with the motive of profitting or community betterment, to see that we have the proper structures to implement and meet the objective of accruing a body of knowledge, based on real-life experiences of implementing ICTs across schools in Afirca.

With the launch of the NEPAD e-school initiative in Kenya on 27 September 2005, as Isiolo Girsls School, it will be a matter of time before we can determine its viability.

Perhaps there will be other such charitable organizations like Computers for Charity that might look at the issue from an entirely perspective.