Internet may aid Africa Colleges (11)
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The best thing about that article was the criticism it generated.
Bureaucrats may still be inclined to fund white elephants, but
judging from the postings there are enough people who are highly
clued.
I wonder, is there really a shortage in Africa of people who can
teach first year calculus? I doubt it very much. Most countries
probably already have graduates who get A+ in calculus and then go
on to be traders or sit around because there are no scientific/
technical jobs. Yet some aid projects seem to be designed with the
assumption that Africa suffers from a shortage of neurons, rather
than hardware.
A good measure of the project would be the ratio "new bandwidth
going out"/"new bandwidth coming in". By this measure, the benefit
from the $1.2 million investment is dangerously close to zero.
Why don't they just put that money into a fund, and universities can
apply for money to lease lines, buy servers, routers, interface
cards, LAN hubs, workstations, modem pools, and to pay for training
of system administrators. The money would only be granted to those
who can prove that they will make good use of it.
-nemo-
Nemo Semret
e-mail: nemo@CTR.COLUMBIA.EDU
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