Power, power, power

Another very good day working with the Abuja Universal Basic Education Board (UBEB). Today, Sumit and I visited the top public school in Abuja. It's a junior high school with a focus on e-learning to increase students' computer literacy. If I were to tell you this about a school in the US, you would probably assume that every student carries around a laptop. Unfortunately, that's far from the case here in Nigeria. This "model" school we visited has one classroom designated as the computer lab.

The 1,350 students enrolled in this school must share this room, and not every grade gets to use it. The students that do use it, spend a mere 40 minutes a day learning on the computer and then return to their normal classroom.

However, I was immensely impressed with what UBEB and the principal of this school have accomplished. The principal is committed to improving the current e-learning program and has many great ideas that would transform the school--if only he had the funds. We heard again, that the key challenges the school faces are unreliable electricity and limited internet. The school simply cannot afford to purchase enough bandwidth so that all students in one classroom can be online at the same time. All of the CSC Nigeria teams have heard these same issues. We have our work cut our for us if we really want to make an impact here.

Here are pictures of the laptops just to show how compact and durable they are.

Ironically, as I'm typing the power just cut out. It just boggles my mind how a country so rich in minerals cannot properly regulate electricity. I guess it's the resource curse. Fortunately, we are staying in a hotel with a backup generator so we never lose power for more than a few minutes. However, most Nigerians can't afford generators so when the power goes out, it's out anywhere from 10 minutes up to a couple of hours, multiple times a day.


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