By David Himbara
For the past decade, General Paul Kagame has been spreading across Rwanda fibre optic cables to connect Rwandans to the internet. Kagame’s plan was to have all schools in Rwanda connected to the internet by 2020. Back in 2016, The New Times wrote about this as follows:
”The Ministry of Education will prioritise ICT in the 2016/17 fiscal year budget in line with the implementation of the new competence-based curriculum to make Rwanda a knowledge-based economy by 2020.”
The New Times reminded us on January 4, 2020 that
”All primary and secondary schools in Rwanda were set to have adopted technology in teaching and learning by 2020 in a government bid that was aimed at digitising the education sector.”
So, what happened? Not much as usual. Kagame’s noise is rarely matched by action. Here Kagame’s New Times explaining what happened.
”Limited access to electricity has made it impossible for some schools to adopt ICT in education, according to Samuel Murindwa, the Permanent Secretary at the Ministry of Education…Access to electricity is one of the limiting factors to roll out smart classrooms.”
What about using solar energy to roll out smart classrooms? This has not worked, according to The New Times story. ”It is expensive to power these classroom facilities with solar.”
There you go, General Kagame. Electricity comes first before the smart classroom.
