Will UAE possibly support Laptops for every child in Pakistan?
OLPC has been long debated whether it will be shipped within its initially announced price of US$100 per laptop and will it be affordable by developing world countries where national budgets may reach the total cost of buying these laptops for every child. Currently the true cost of the OLPC possibly stands at US$208 and if it carries a 5-year long-term support plan, the price could jump beyond US$ 972 per laptop. OLPC is trying to identify various solutions to overcome this issue.
In a Q&A session with Silicon.com's Jo Best last month, Nicholas Negroponte, founder, One Laptop Per Child shared that in central America there are eight countries grouping together in a single block to purchase laptops and he was talking to the Philippines and Pakistan. A viable solution is being presented through talking with rich countries to help poor countries.
Finland is interested in Namibia, UAE is interested in helping Pakistan, and France is looking at countries in Africa.
Prime Minister of Pakistan Shaukat Aziz stated in November 2006 that the Government of Pakistan will consider the feasibility for making low-cost laptop computers available to school going children in Pakistan. With this, newspapers recently carried the news that Pakistan is gearing up to buy the OLPCs "One Laptop Per Child" for every child in Pakistan and this may possibly be done with the support by the United Arab Emirates as mentioned earlier by Negroponte.
There has been a good amount of discussion whether this investment will be successful or not by Wayan Vota, who launched the OLPCNews.com blog to monitor the OLPC project's development because he has been quite skeptical it can achieve its aims. The blog presents an interesting debate that the United Arab Emirates funding OLPC XO's for Pakistan would be a whole other situation.
UAE might be a rich federation of 7 emirates, but 40% of its $35 Billion dollar budget would be consumed by a $13.5 Billion dollar purchase of $208 dollar laptops for Pakistan's 65 million children. Take into account the real cost of the OLPC, $972 dollars per laptop, and the cost balloons to a budget smashing $63 Billion, or almost double U.A.E.'s entire budget. This debate still stands unquestioned.
An interesting comment shedding light on the state of affairs in OLPC project target stakeholder countries was found on the OLPC wiki made by a Pakistani citizen Yahya Malik Kent says that, "How can we get a Project started in Pakistan for remote villages where even the government employees
(teachers) donot like to work? Can I help to get some project stated on private basis and not going through the government?" Interestingly, no one at the OLPC website has replied or removed this comment.
Since the OLPC carries a LinuxBIOS, it was originally anticipated in Pakistan that the OLPC was to carry Linux localized in to Urdu in light of the Ubuntu-Linux Localization Efforts being carried out by the Ubuntu l10n Translation Team, members of Ubuntu Pakistan. The OLPC website carries an official page on localization efforts initially identified by FOSSFP: Free and Open Source Software Foundation of Pakistan and continued towards inclusion of Urdu Language officially in the international distribution versions of Ubuntu, Edubuntu, Kubuntu and Xubuntu Linux.
But according to a recent press release by OLPC, it has announced a user interface (UI) called Sugar for its XO laptops. The Sugar UI has been jointly developed with Red Hat and Pentagram being a purpose-built educational environment for children using the OLPC laptops. According to Walter Bender, OLPC's president of software and content, "The Sugar interface has been designed to suit the way children understand and describe their world and relationships. Most importantly, Sugar is easy for children to learn to use, yet it's also rich and capable of fostering unbounded discovery, learning, and exploration."
The XO machines are still being tweaked, and Sugar isn't expected to be tested by any kids until February. By July or so, several million are expected to reach Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Nigeria, Libya, Pakistan, Thailand and the Palestinian territory. Negroponte said three more African countries might sign on in the next two weeks. The Inter-American Development Bank is trying to get the laptops to multiple Central American countries.
The machines are being made by Quanta Computer Inc., and countries will get versions specific to their own languages. Governments or donors will buy the laptops for children to own, along with associated server equipment for their schools. The project itself has gotten at least $29 million in funding from companies including Google Inc., News Corp. and Red Hat.
About One Laptop per Child
One Laptop per Child (OLPC) is a non-profit organization created by Nicholas Negroponte and other faculty members from the MIT Media Lab to design, manufacture and distribute laptop computers that are sufficiently inexpensive to provide every child in the world access to acknowledge and modern forms of education.
The laptops will be sold to governments and issued to children by schools on a basis of one laptop per child. These machines will be rugged, open source, and so energy efficient that they can be powered by a child manually. Mesh networking will give many machines Internet access from one connection. The pricing goal will start near $100 and then steadily decrease.
Online References:
One Laptop Per Child
What is the Real Cost of the OLPC? From OLPC News.
Silicon.com's Jo Best Q&A with Nicholas Negroponte, founder, One Laptop Per Child.
Govt. to consider for making low-cost laptop computers available to school going children: PM. From Associated Press of Pakistan.
Yahya Malik Kent's comment on OLPC website.
Free and Open Source Software Foundation of Pakistan
OLPC Urdu Localization Section
Press Release Source:
OLPC Announces First-of-its-Kind User Interface for XO Laptop Computer
Novel software drives '$100 laptop'
Fouad Bajwa's Linux and FOSS Industry Analysis Blog
Fouad Riaz Bajwa
FOSS Advocate
Lahore - Pakistan
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