IEET’s African Futures Project delivers Cellphones to Madagascar

This is excellent! As Hank Pellissier’s article points out:

“Many African schools and universities are almost devoid of books. Recognizing this, the Wikipedia Foundation and Orange - a French telecommunications company - are providing free cellphone access to wikipedia later this year. Jeffrey Sachs, director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University, believes access to global cyber-libraries will benefit African education “from primary school level through universities and in research communities as well.”

Cell phones aid African academia in multiple ways:

* School lectures are recorded by the devices, for later listening.
* Calculators provide help with math.
* In Niger, where illiteracy is high, adult students who learned on a phone-based curriculum progressed 30% faster than pupils in normal literacy classes.
* In South Africa, the social networking company MXit set up a math tutoring service, so perplexed pupils can query live tutors instantaneously via their mobiles.
* Distance learners - a large demographic in Africa - are similarly enabled.”

We need more projects like this one! Education, education, education!

Hi Kris—thanks for your concern with education. We are also looking to help a USA group with donated tech equipment, so if you know of a school or youth group in your area that needs technical equipment, let me know and I will see if I can get some equipment donated. Thanks for your interest!