On the Road to Hell in Nigeria
As the saying goes, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. In Nigeria, a nation where paved roads are hard to find, the saying still holds. The current “good intention” is an initiative to give 1 million Nigerian school children “$100” laptops (they actually cost $140). These laptops run a flavor of Linux on AMD processors.
This is the source, a Nigerian newspaper story from July 19. This story was, in turn, picked up by VNUNet in this link here, which was referenced by DailyTech. Note that the original Nigerian story states the following:
Expectedly, the One Laptop Per Child drew a lot of excitement from the media, to which Nduwke responded that the Federal Government has paid a million dollars for the first batch of the products which will come free of charge to the Nigerian child while also expressing the concern that the systems shouldn’t end up in wrong places.
This became the source for the following text in VNUNet:
Nigeria has officially ordered and paid for one million of the One Laptop per Child (OLPC) devices, according to the Nigerian Vanguard newspaper.
The DailyTech reports the VNUNet mistake of “a million laptops” instead of a “million dollars.” Big discrepancy there.
I have a few questions:
First, what is the source of the “million dollars” the Federal Goverment of Nigeria is using to buy the laptops? This sounds suspiciously like the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation giving the money to the government for this particular program (and no, I don’t think the fact that the software isn’t MS Windows has anything to do with the decision). I do not believe that the government is using its own funds to buy these laptops, and would like to learn the source of these funds.
Second, How many of those laptops do you believe will make it into the hands of schoolchildren?
According to Transparency International, Nigeria ranks #152 out of a 158 countries in the 2005 Corruption Perceptions Index. The government of Nigeria is a kleptocracy that steals from the people it governs – from the Presidency all the way down to the local gendarmes.
Do you really believe that a product representing roughly a third of the average Nigerian’s share of GDP will make it to those it is intended to go to?
Laptops will not raise Nigeria out of poverty even if we could guarantee they would go to the children. Nigeria needs a government that will not view its role as an institution for legalized thievery.
Dean's World:
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26 July 2006, 9:59 am