Shelving laptop project a disappointment, but sensible

NAIROBI: One of the things that endeared the Jubilee coalition to the electorate in the run-up to the 2013 General Election was the promise to give Standard One pupil's laptops from January 2014. In this digital era, many parents looked forward to seeing their children equipped with relevant skills that would no doubt prepare them for the new order in the world.

Almost two years later, that has remained just that; a promise.

Hopes were slowly dashed after it seemingly dawned on the Jubilee-led government that matching words with action, especially on this, was not easy.

Government planners had settled on a Sh12 billion budget for the supply of 1.3 million laptops and readied the country with a tendering procedure.

Olive Telecommunications Company of India, the lowest of the bids, quoted Sh25 billion.

Whether by design or default, the award of the tender to Olive Telecommunications was challenged in court by the losing bidders who observed that it was awarded contrary to procurement laws.

The tender was cancelled and it was back to the drawing board. Not much has been heard since about the laptops, until the announcement by Treasury Cabinet Secretary Henry Rotich.

Mr Rotich, while seeking a Sh57.1 billion Supplementary Budget approval, told the Parliamentary Budget Committee that the money earmarked for the laptop project would be used to keep the Government going till the next financial year because "it doesn't see the laptop project as a priority".

Although this is a big let-down, several lessons arise: One, politics and economics are not usually one and the same; two, politicians should temper campaign promises with a reasonable dose of reality; third and perhaps most important; the public ought to hold their leaders to account for failed or unrealistic promises.

From the outset, critics of the laptop project objected to it, insisting there were more pressing needs in the education sector and giving a laptop to a pupil studying under a tree would make little sense.

Abraham Maslow came up with the hierarchy of needs in 1943. He argues that humans aim to meet basic needs first then seek to meet "higher needs" in succession.

It would therefore follow that the politicians ought to have aimed to satisfy the basic needs of pupils across the country (classrooms, teachers, water, food, electricity) before thinking about an expensive laptop roll-out.

Not that encouraging pupils to adopt technology is all bad. Quite the reverse.

The benefits of exposing pupils to technology would have dovetailed with the plan to increase the human resource capacity in ICT in schools and training for teachers.

But the laptop project also exposed the inconsistencies in Government policy. Its commitment to fighting illiteracy and improving education standards is seemingly less than enthusiastic.

The cavalier attitude to parents' outcry against the high cost of education points to the fact that a good education remains the preserve of the well-to-do. And that chances of the poor escaping poverty through education remain slim.