In the town of Ganta in Nimba County, northern Liberia, a bright yellow bus pulls up outside of a high school and parks under the shade of a cotton tree.
However, it is not there to take the students home for the evening.
On board are 10 laptops lined up in a neat row, ready for students to learn typing, computer and digital literacy skills after their regular lessons.
The “Computer Lab on Wheels” was launched in November last year by Jeremiah Lloyd Cooper, an information and communications technology professional who has worked in Internet cafes across the region and sought an innovative solution to bring the cyberera to rural communities.
He obtained US$40,000 from a UN Development Programme business accelerator to launch his start-up, the New Breed Tech Hub.
He said that it has trained 1,000 students so far in computer skills and digital literacy.
“We can move anywhere and conduct training to children, to youth and women living in underserved communities,” Cooper told reporters.
He himself recalls being humiliated on his first day of university, when he turned up to an information technology class and did not know how to type.
“I graduated from high school actually with no basic computer knowledge,” the social entrepreneur said. “Ever since, my dream has been to be able to extend computer literacy to children graduating from high school.”
He said the business charges small fees from students and is already turning a profit.
This type of skills training has mostly been centralized in Liberia’s capital, Monrovia, with high-school graduates from rural communities often migrating to the city to obtain technical training.
Only 26 percent of Liberians use the Internet, 2020 data from the World Bank showed.
The mobile course aims at boosting skills among people who already have access to computing through mobile phones, and secondhand tablets and laptops.
During a recent training session, Comfort Gbelee, an 18-year-old student at the J.W. Pearson High School in Ganta — about 135km from Monrovia — was learning typing skills.
“Computer is very important — computer is faster in writing than chalkboard,” Gbelee said. “People make mistakes in copybooks and on chalkboards, but computers don’t make mistakes.”
The program has been a game-changer for her, she said.
“Each time we reach these new communities, the momentum is high,” said Martin Payedoe, one of New Breed’s trainers. “Students are eager, they want to learn.”
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