NYARUGENGE - The Director of the Regional ICT Training and Research Centre, Jerome Gasana, has said that plans are underway for all teachers to be computer literate by 2010.

He said this Thursday, while concluding a teachers’ computer training workshop at the Kigali Institute of Science and Technology (KIST).

"We are targeting all teachers including those teaching in secondary schools to have been trained to use a computer by 2010. We are now going to rural areas. We have been working mostly with urban teachers,” he told The Sunday Times in an interview.

Gasana said that over 5,000 Primary School teachers were trained in the first phase and that the centre wil now train secondary school teachers. He also revealed that government will import about 100,000 computers that will be distributed across the country.

John Baptist Kwehayo, an English teacher at La Colombiere, said the XO type computers provided by the One Laptop per Child (OLPC) initiative help pupils avoid carrying a bulk of books to and from schools in addition to being durable.

"It is a very good computer. It is water and dust proof. It has a hard body which does not easily break even when it falls down. These computers are just right for children,” he said.

The training attracted over 100 teachers from six private Primary Schools including Green Hills Academy, La Colombiere and Kigali Parents.

The government wants to transform Rwanda into a knowledge-based economy by the year 2020.

The country began embracing information technology as the main strategy for economic and social development to transform the country into a medium-level income country.

Even before OLPC started, the government enhanced computer literacy to primary school students as a goal to prepare the country for the new economy.

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