Towards a knowledge-based economy

In 2000, Rwanda adopted vision 2020 which aimed at building a knowledge-based economy. This strategy was centered on investing in its main asset, the Rwandan population. This meant to use most of its budget into developing infrastructure, education and health. To date, government has deployed 200,000 laptops in over 400 schools, becoming the 3rd largest implementation of a 1 to 1 computing in public school programme in the world and the first in Africa. More than just placing the laptops in the hands of pupils, the programme includes a massive capacity building exercise for teachers on both basic ICTs but also and more importantly the methodology of teaching using digital content. Having inherited an education system where few where allowed to go to school from regimes prior to 1994, the main challenge was to ensure that Rwanda provide free basic education to all students in primary and secondary schools. This was meant not only to eliminate the massive ignorance that led to the various massacres from 1959 which escalated to a full-scale genocide in 1994 but also to provide to the population the needed skills to make Rwanda a knowledge-based economy. That is how Rwanda embarked on a massive construction of classrooms all over the country. As Rwanda was achieving access to all in education, a fundamental question needed to be answered. How do we ensure that all our students have access to courses, lessons comparable to the best schools around the world, especially those in highly competitive countries such as Singapore, Japan, Korea or the USA? This was even more important given that in most third world countries, teachers in primary schools are the least qualified and the least paid. It is in this context that Rwanda selected to use technology in schools to improve the quality of its education and take advantage of digital, interactive, graphic rich curriculum to introduce a constructionist approach. That is how Rwanda elected to implement the One Laptop per child program in all its primary schools Through the Rwanda One Laptop Programme, knowledge is delivered to the students in a new way, where the teacher is more of a facilitator rather than an instructor. This is a great equalizer in developing countries where the disparity between urban and rural teachers is great. So far, the OLPC Programme has trained close to 10,000 teachers providing them with the tools to access content on servers and equipping them with the ability to improve students’ understanding of complex concept in mathematics and science through visualization and interactivity provided by digital lessons. The programme also enables teachers to improve their own knowledge with various e-books and language lessons. The Rwandan OLPC programme also includes the implementation of an eco-system to complement the usage of laptops. Each school in Rwanda is receiving a server with a management and information system and digital, graphic-rich, interactive courses in mathematics, science and English providing to students a ludic, self paced environment for learning. So far, 200 schools have been equipped each with servers and wireless local area network linking the laptops to the digital content. Students are also enabled to engage in a variety of course and creative subjects such as the creation of newsletters or the building of projects through basic programing languages. This year, MIT International Scratch Day saw the participation of 5 schools in Rwanda where students published their programs from the Kigali Public Library. In October 2013, Rwanda will host its first national programing contest, where all technology-enabled schools will compete for the best programing project. From 2014 students in Rwanda will start taking programing and Read/Write exams using laptops. Through the implementation of the One Laptop per Child programme, Rwanda has developed several initiatives bring the private sector on board. Indeed while building towards a knowledge-based economy, this programme has offered to various ICT infrastructure providers and digital content developers opportunities for participation. Be it a manufacturing assembly plant, a modern call center or maintenance facilities all over the country, this program is actively driving towards the setup of a Technopole, which will propel the country ICT sector. The writer is the national coordinator, One Laptop Per Child Programme