School was out, but on an afternoon in rural Benin, 11-year-old Ambroise rushed to a tree-shaded parking lot, his day’s learning not yet done.
Parked beneath the cola trees was a trailer loaded with computers — the kind of technology that few students in the west African country had ever seen, much less touched.
Designed by BloLab, a nonprofit group based in Benin’s largest city, Cotonou, the 13m-long trailer is powered by 12 solar panels and equipped with enough laptops to give rural students a chance to familiarize themselves with computers, which most families cannot afford.
Photo: AFP
“When the teacher told us that we’d start having computer class again, I quickly finished my work, because I was so happy,” said Ambroise, from eastern Benin’s Avrankou District.
In his class of 48, only four students had even touched a computer before. Ambroise had used one at a photocopy shop, while the other three had a sibling who owned one.
In Benin, the digital divide is not just a concept, but a reality, BloLab founder Medard Agbayazon said.
“In the towns, many people have technology, there are cybercafes, but in villages it is rare to find a computer or a smartphone,” he told reporters.
Benin’s Internet penetration rate is just 42.2 percent, the Regulatory Authority for Electronic and Postal Communication said in a report last year.
Among these, almost everyone (96 percent) used a mobile phone for accessing the Web, the report said.
These are the conditions that spawned the idea for a mobile classroom furnished with desks, as well as fans to ward off the tropical heat.
BloLab pays to rent a cab to tow the trailer, which was donated by Swiss-based charity African Puzzle.
The classroom, which has visited two communities since August last year, stays in one place for a month at a time, providing five two-hour computer skills classes per week, free of charge.
It is a drop in the ocean for Avrankou, which has a population of 128,000 scattered in 59 villages served by 88 primary schools.
“The idea isn’t to make computer scientists, but just to make children want to use digital technology. It’s a tool that can solve real problems in everyday life,” Agbayazon said.
As one group of pupils practiced using a word processor on the trailer’s laptops, another worked in a corner of the town hall, learning to build computers in jerry cans with recycled components from obsolete machines or donated by businesses and charities in Cotonou.
The students were already familiar with terms like “motherboard,” “hard drive” and “power supply” from a previous lesson.
One of two trainers, Raoul Letchede, showed the kids the components that they would use to assemble a makeshift computer in a 25-liter yellow plastic container.
These homemade machines must be hooked up to a computer screen to work.
“This lesson familiarizes them with the inside of a computer, demystifies how it works and shows them that they can make their own, even without much money,” Letchede said.
One rule of the mobile classroom is that all the software used must be free to the public.
“We have to promote this practice, because we don’t have the money here to buy the licenses,” Agbayazon said. “We don’t want to encourage children to hack.”
The approach impressed local official Apollinaire Oussou Lio on a recent visit to the class.
“This is an opportunity to no longer be a slave to software from the big multinationals,” Lio said, adding that he would also like to be more computer savvy.
“I’d also like to be trained,” he said, adding that he wanted to learn to use geolocation to better preserve the surrounding forests.
Teacher Guillaume Gnonlonfoun was happy for his students. The school where he works has no computer and he first used one at university.
Many of Gnonlonfoun’s colleagues have never used a PC and the BloLab class is open to them as well.
“These days, nothing can be done without digital technology,” he told reporters. “So that we don’t end up being the illiterates of this millennium, it is essential that we have equipment.”
However, until real computers arrive in the community, students and teachers will have no option, but to build their own.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”