It's child's play to get 400 laptops with MIT initiative
March 17, 2006
By Thabiso Mochiko
Johannesburg - The department of communications would order 400 low-cost laptops from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), which is spearheading an initiative to increase internet access and bridge the digital divide in developing nations, it said on Wednesday.
The department said it would place an order in the next financial year, which starts in April, but had not yet decided where the computers would be distributed, adding that buying the laptops was a way of "taking information communications technology to rural areas".
The laptops, which cost $100 (R620) each, are aimed at millions of school children around the world who do not have computers of their own.
One Laptop Per Child (OLPC), a non-profit organisation set up by MIT to spearhead the initiative, said in an e-mail that it was waiting for the South African government to place an order.
OLPC has secured about $10 million in funding from about six companies including Google, News Corporation and Nortel.
The laptops are about the size of regular notebooks, can make a wireless connection to the internet and have a low power consumption.
The computers were able to form a "mesh network", which meant several hundred machines could share a single point of access, OLPC said.
In Africa, OLPC said Nigeria and Egypt had placed orders for the laptops. It expects to ship 10 million computers to Nigeria, Egypt, China, Brazil, Thailand, India and Argentina later this year.
OLPC announced last year that Taiwan's Quanta Computers would manufacture the laptops, while Red Hat would offer software services.
Fujitsu Siemens Computers, which is not involved with OLPC, said last week that it was "impossible" to produce cheap computers. It felt that it would take time to manufacture them.
The group said it would look at whether it could produce cheap computers using refurbished components.
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