COMPUTER PER CHILD POLICY LAUDABLE (OCT 11, 2008)

IN December 2003 and November 2005, the United Nations (UN) organised two summits on the World Information Society in Geneva and Tunis, respectively, to encourage world leaders to lay the foundation for the establishment of the World Information Society.
According to International Telecommunication Union (ITU) data, Africa, with a population of about 760 million people, representing about 13 per cent of the world’s population, has only two per cent of the world’s telephone lines. Africa’s teledensity (number of telephone lines per 100 people) of 7.4 is the lowest in the world.
To overcome the digital divide, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the United States (US) has designed laptops for children in the world and a foundation has been established to popularise the distribution of laptops across the globe.
At the 14th annual Teachers Awards ceremony in Sunyani last Wednesday, President J. A. Kufuor announced the programme of the government to provide all schoolchildren aged between 5 and 12 in public schools with personal computers to enable them to acquire skills in ICT, which is currently the most critical basic instrument of education world-wide.
The first batch of 10,000 units of the laptops, described as “Magic Computers for Children”, is expected to be rolled out next month and a formal agreement for delivery is set to be signed by the government and the MIT very soon. This initiative is laudable.
The Daily Graphic urges the government to ensure that the programme to provide all children with laptops succeeds. In the 2008 Budget statement presented to Parliament by the late Kwadwo Baah-Wiredu, the former Minister of Finance, only $3 million was provided for the supply of the computers to the schoolchildren.
The computer programme should be regarded as a key component of the educational reform introduced by the government in September 2007 and it is imperative that the distribution of the computers be fair.
The rural communities have already been denied adequate logistics that engender effective teaching and learning and they should not suffer further deprivation. We should avoid the situation where the distribution of the computers will be skewed in favour of schools in the metropolitan and urban centres, to the detriment of those in the rural areas.
Another difficulty that the government should address is the cost of Internet service. It should be made affordable so that many more Ghanaians, including the schoolchildren who will benefit from laptops, can access the technology.
In view of global trends in ICT knowledge and application, it would be necessary for children to be exposed to computer literacy programmes. However, its misuse or abuse raises serious concerns and it is important that while allowing children to use computers, they are given the needed guidance and counselling to put them in check.
The type of energy that the computers will use is also of great concern, since it is expected that children in deprived areas where there usually is no electricity are also covered.
Internet usage in Ghana hovers around 2.7 per cent, compared to 5.3 per cent in Africa, and statistics indicate that only 1.5 million Ghanaians have access to the Internet, partly due to the cost. A subscriber to the broadband Internet service of Ghana Telecom, for example, is required to pay as much as GH¢40 a month. A 2007 World Bank Report on Internet usage in the world cited Ghana as one of the African countries with the lowest record of Internet patronage, coming behind South Africa, Nigeria, Morocco, Algeria, Zimbabwe, Kenya and Senegal.
The world is becoming so sophisticated that the role of ICT in national development is obvious. In times past, the richest people in the world were basically merchants and industrialists, but now the trend of wealthy people, such as Bill Gates of Microsoft fame, is shifting to those who control ICT.
We believe that ICT holds the key to national development and that the future of Ghana depends upon its willingness to harness this resource for its socio-economic transformation. For, where there is a WILL, there is always a WAY.