Of failed school laptop project and sobering lessons it offers

Five years after the projected launch of the primary schools laptop project, the government has finally admitted it is not viable. Instead, the Ministry of Education plans to set up one computer laboratory for each of the 25,000 primary schools across Kenya.

It all got off to a bad start when bidders in the project that would have led to the procurement of 1.3 million laptops went to court in 2014. This followed the mystery around Olive Telecommunications which, despite having initially quoted Sh32 billion against the government’s set budget of Sh12 billion, won the tender.