Personal Computers, Education and Training, Global: FAIR, a Scandinavian-based international aid organisation, has recently accused the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project of misleading poor countries into taking a high investment risk for a new type of technology. What is more FAIR question its very success. We publish FAIR's comments and Nicholas Negroponte's reply...

FAIR writes as follows:

With uncertain definitions of target groups and heavy international marketing, OLPC appears to be trying to create a need which has not existed before and which does not exist at all in the world’s richer regions. Developing countries are thus being misled into measures which shift the focus away from their real needs.

High price

In OLPC’s agreement with Libya, for example, one OLPC with Internet and support costs US$208 per schoolchild. A normal school with 500-1,000 students must thus invest US$100,000 - US$200,000 to join the OLPC programme. This price represents a normal ten-year budget for a school in the world’s 50 Least Developed Countries (LDCs). In addition, there are the costs of Internet subscription, training, operation, infrastructure and responsible handling of waste. A PC-lab of new Pentium 4 computers in each school would cost a tenth of the OLPC-programme and is today the preferred solution in model countries like Norway, Sweden and the USA.

High technological risk

OLPC cannot today be used as a replacement for a normal PC. All software to be used by OLPC must be tailored to the new technology, and with today’s deficiencies that’s a big job. For example, OLPC does not even offer a simple spreadsheet. Theoretically it might be possible for OLPC to be made satisfactorily compatible with PC (WIN/LIN/MAC), but it would take many years of software development to achieve this. With its limited 512 Mb memory it is equally likely that OLPC could never be able to become a satisfactory work station.

Misleading marketing

As a normal commercial company OLPC is heavily marketing its product’s advantages without giving enough information about the weaknesses and pitfalls of the new technology. Attention is being directed away from the gaping deficiencies and the project’s high risk: OLPC is being marketed as a “US$100 laptop” when it really costs over US$200 - plus other substantial investment costs.

Wrong target group

The worst part of OLPC’s marketing is that it is talking about an incorrect market group, twice what actually exists. OLPC says its target group is aged 6-18 years, when in reality it is 6-12. Professor Negroponte himself has admitted that OLPC today is a toy and as it doesn’t offer the simplest kind of spreadsheet at the expense of game buttons etc it can hardly cover the needs of the 12-18 age group. The reason for this incorrect, expanded target group is that Nicholas Negroponte has missed the market. Children in the 6-12 age group don’t need PC access in the way older children and young people do and therefore no such market exists today. Nicholas Negroponte is trying to create a new market for OLPC. We fear that the authorities in many poor countries will be misled into believing that investing in OLPC could cover the ICT needs of the 12-18 age group. This could be fatal for a country which would then be unable for many years to make new investments in ICT for secondary schools, in which PC labs are needed to prepare students for modern working life or further education.

MIT and OLPC unethical

Three years ago Negroponte publicly announced that he would make a video projector for a hundred dollars, although subsequent events proved that he could not. If there is only a fifty-fifty chance of OLPC succeeding, we believe it is irresponsible and unethical for MIT and OLPC to recommend the project to LDCs as aggressively as they are doing.

Every year in the west we destroy tens of millions of PCs which are far better than OLPC and which would cost not much more than a tenth of OLPC to put to use in developing countries. This is established technology which can run the latest software and get the recipients up to western levels of IT technology without delays. In the present circumstances this is a far better alternative. For western organisations such as MIT, OLPC and their sub-contractors to benefit by transferring expensive and risky technology to the world's poorest countries, without any documented need for it, looks like exploitation to those of us who are really committed to global aid work.

* FAIR is a humanitarian organisation based in Scandinavia which is working towards the spread of ICT in developing countries. It transfers technology and knowledge from Scandinavia to the school and health sectors in the world's poorest countries. All products and services are donated as gifts and free of charge to the recipients, hundreds of thousands of students in hundreds of schools in 15 of the world's poorest countries. FAIR is also Norway’s leader in the recycling of ICT, and is financed by NORAD, the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, UNESCO and 55 Norwegian and Swedish companies.

Nicholas Negroponte replies:

Apologise, FAIR. Or tell us what you would do! For reasons OLPC cannot understand, your organisation has launched a scathing attack, seemingly in support of a very IT-centric view of school, the developing world and the needs of children. Not only is Microsoft developing Windows for the XO, but it already runs Open Office, though no child should be doing so. The developing world does not need children learning IT. It needs children to learn learning itself.

It is not our policy to do anything but support efforts that provide access to children, including yours even though the economics of recycled computers or computer labs just do not hold or scale. If you or your people had looked more carefully you would have found how wrong your remarks were. For example, the amount you quote in Libya includes everything, including access, and has start-up costs that do not continue. Even at US$200, amortise US$188 of that over five years. The long-term total cost of ownership and connectivity of an XO laptop is US$32 per year per child (still too high). Since we are not in the laptop business as such, if you or anybody has a better solution, we'll adopt it.

It seems to me that there are two choices at this time, to correct a situation of your own making. One is to remove your story and issue an apology of some sort. The other is enter into an unnecessary battle Where, win or lose, the lose-lose people are those in Eritrea and other places that will learn sooner rather than later that computer labs are like tennis courts. Yes, you should have them. Yet, we do not advocate “one tennis court per child.”

Please advise how you wish to proceed - Nicholas Negroponte.

And that, readers of Developing Telecoms, is where YOU come in. Tell us your views on this dispute, on the views expressed. We’ll respect your anonymity if you ask us to.

more info:

• www.fairinternational.org
• www.laptop.org