OLPC - best use of money?

OLPC stands for One Laptop Per Child. The project is intedned to provide low-cost computers to the children of developing countries.


BITS of nytimes.com reported the following

The One Laptop Per Child project is starting a “Give 1 Get 1″ campaign to try to jump start its drive to bring its XO laptop to children in the developing world.

Give 1 Get 1

In return for spending $399, American customers will receive their own laptop as well as paying for a second computer for children in countries that are among the poorest of the poor: Afghanistan, Cambodia, Haiti and Rwanda.

OLPC hopes that by subsidizing the purchase of computers in these four countries, other countries will be prompted to make their own investments on their children.

If we built the laptop, will they buy it?

Quanta Computer is beginning mass production of the laptops in OctoberNovember (some 40,000 units will be produced in November, then about 80,000 the following month), but with far fewer than the 3 1 million orders that OLPC was waiting for.

So far, not a single government has written a check for the laptops.

The OLPC is facing skepticism among potential customers — the governments in developing nations — mainly because the laptops' price has gone up from $100 to $188. Given that poor countries only allocate less than $20 per year per pupil to education, few governments are willing to invest this much in technology for education.


Also, the technology of XO laptops is unusual — a small green-and-white machine that communicates with a wireless, peer-to-peer network and is not running Microsoft’s Windows or Office. So even if a government is willing to invest in computers, they have to bet on an odd-looking box and unfamiliar software.

Instead, I think that building schools, hiring teachers, and buying books and equipments would be better use of education dollars in the developing world.

P.S. More reporting from msn.com on the '$100 laptop.'