Computers - Bridging the Digital Divide

Across Africa, new information technologies are rapidly changing the lives of a small but growing number of people. In Accra, Ghana, entrepreneurs who in the past were not able to get a dial tone on their land-line telephones can now connect immediately using Internet telephony, technology that allows phone calls to be made through the Internet. And in Niger, the Bankilare Community Information Centre downloads audio programs from the African Learning Channel and rebroadcasts them on local radio.

So far, these are some of the few, fortunate Africans. For most people even making a telephone call is still a remote possibility in an era when most of the world is now communicating almost instantly across cities, regions and the globe using wireless and satellite technologies to send high-speed electronic messages. /p>

Communications hardware is even rarer than a fixed telephone line. Most African school children have never even seen a computer, much less use one. Even their teachers are hardly more technologically aware, in an age when children elsewhere consider computer use part of everyday life. /p>

To remedy this alarming situation, African children, who have shown in the past that they are every bit as intelligent as their peers elsewhere, must be introduced urgently to computer literacy and technology. This would begin by getting children, many of whom have never seen one, acquainted with computers. /p>

Your donation of a used computer, or cash to fund training programs and other materials, would be a big step in our effort to safeguard the future of the African child by narrowing the digital divide between the continent and other regions of the world. /p>

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