James Muthoka is a miracle worker. For 27 years he has tended his small farm outside the dusty town of Machakos, a two-hour ride from Nairobi. That anything grows in this parched land is staggering enough, but this year Muthoka has grown four times more maize than his neighbours. How has Muthoka pulled off this agricultural wonder? With nothing more than a computer.
Donating PCs
For the past two years the Kenyan Met Office has been computerising its forecasting service. Thanks to a donation of 300 PCs from the UK Met Office, the Kenyan Met Office working with the London-based charity Computer Aid has been able to provide computers for all the country's 36 weather recording stations as well as its Nairobi headquarters.
Using special software, all these weather stations are now able to process more than 60 years of carefully recorded weather data, and so provide farmers such as James Muthoka with crucial advice as to when the rains are likely to fall and which variety of crops to sow.
Muthoka's life has been transformed. "My farm provides the only income for me and my family," says the 43-year-old, who has five children. "The drought is very severe and without the information my crops would have definitely failed."
The bumper harvest means that Muthoka has been able to sell around 18 bags of maize, while the farmers next door have produced barely enough to feed their families.
According to Professor Eliud Omolo from Kenya's Egerton University, the project holds out the promise of progress for Kenya during a time of moribund development. "If you can't provide employment, then let him produce enough food for him to feed his family and then let him sell the excess."
Since 1998, Computer Aid has supplied more than 70 000 refurbished computers to organisations across the developing world. "An estimated three million PCs are decommissioned every year in the UK when companies upgrade and change IT systems," says Tony Roberts, the chief executive of Computer Aid.
"While they're worthless to most companies, in the developing world they're greatly sought after." At present many of them are simply dumped in landfill sites. From next year, though, this will be illegal under the EU's Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment(WEEE) directive.
"Latest World Bank research shows that there are five or fewer computers per 1 000 people across most of sub-Saharan Africa," says Roberts. When this divide can be bridged, though, the results can be dramatic. By providing district hospitals deep in the Kenyan bush with donated PCs, digital cameras and scanners, medical teams have been pioneering a system of telemedicine, which can vastly improve the healthcare of ordinary Kenyans.
Here's how it works: because of a lack of trained doctors, many remote hospitals often don't have the expertise to treat complicated cases. Now, if they have a patient with a particularly nasty injury, they can simply take a picture of it and send it, along with case notes and even X-rays, via the PC to more qualified medical staff in Nairobi. And where they have access to the internet, the same remote hospitals can access the World Health Organisation's website for up-to-date treatments for the big killers in Kenya: TB, malaria and HIV/Aids.
Computer Aid also works to improve the lives of some of Kenya's most disadvantaged children. Despite being in one of Nairobi's notorious slums, Our Lady Fatimah school is at the cutting edge of Kenya's IT revolution. Earlier this year it took delivery of 25 refurbished PCs from Computers For Schools Kenya (CFSK), the chari-ty's partner in Kenya. "The job market is very competitive and, unless you've got basic IT skills, your chances of getting a job or going to college are severely limited," says IT teacher Kezziah Muthoni.
Eighteen-year-old Linda Otieno, who was abandoned as a young child and raped as teenager, is well aware of the importance of an IT education. "Computers are everywhere now and if you go for a professional or office job the first thing an employer asks you is whether you are computer literate," she says.
A skilled and IT-trained workforce is now seen as a key factor in Africa's ability to boost its productivity and attract investment. "Information communication technology has been recognised by the UN as a driving force for development," says Tom Musili, the executive director of CFSK.
But with a vast number of young Kenyans unable to afford to finish secondary school education, access to school computers and IT skills is still restricted to the lucky few.
Perhaps even more disadvantaged than the pupils of Our Lady Fatimah are the 250 blind and visually impaired pupils at the Salvation Army School for the Blind in Thika, 50 miles east of Nairobi. It is the only secondary school for the blind and visually impaired in Kenya. Thanks to Computer Aid, which has been working with Sight-savers International, the pupils' education is now greatly improved, as IT teacher Dorothy Ogongo explains. "As well as providing them with vital IT skills, our pupils are able to use the PCs to listen to talking books, which reduces the need for expensive Braille textbooks."
In the IT classroom, having confidently spelled out her name on the keyboard, 18-year-old Winnie Kajeni breaks into a broad smile as the computer reads her name back. "I enjoy using the computer as it's much easier to use than the Braille machine," she says.
Tony Roberts says that computers in countries such as Kenya are no longer an optional extra. As in the UK, they are a key element in a child's education: "Without appropriate vocational training and skills development, young people in Africa will remain locked into a cycle of poverty and marginalisa-tion," he says. "Unless developing economies such as Kenya are enabled to break out of the cycle of poverty they will always remain dependent upon aid."
So if you're thinking of upgrading your household's PC this Christmas, Roberts urges you to donate your old PC to Computer Aid. "Every PC we receive allows us to make a massive difference, because once it is professionally refurbished it will provide around 6 000 hours of IT education in a school," he says. "This is enough for 50 schoolchildren to learn the computer literacy skills necessary to gain paid employment."
Back at Our Lady Fatimah School lessons have just finished, and the pupils, many of whom are Aids orphans, stream out of the classrooms into the bright Kenyan sunshine. "I don't have problems, I have challenges," says Linda Otieno, speaking like someone far older than her 18 years, "and challenges we need to beat."
With the help of a computer, overcoming those challenges for millions of young Africans like Linda can be made just that little bit easier.
How to donate to Computer Aid
From home:
If you've got an old computer lying around at home, don't just let it gather dust - send it to Computer Aid. Provided that the computer has a Pentium III processor or above, then Computer Aid will gladly take it off your hands and ensure that it's put to good use in the developing world.
From work:
Computer Aid has long-standing donor relationships with a wide range of companies, local authorities and universities. The Virgin Group has donated more than 600 PCs since September. "We liked Computer Aid because we knew that they were donating our PCs to some great causes in the developing world," says Eileen Donnelly, Virgin Aware manager.
Wiping sensitive computer data before re-use is a key issue for all organisations and Computer Aid offers a free service using the latest data destruction software.
Donnelly adds: "Focus on convincing your IT managers that Computer Aid can offer a solution to dealing with old PCs. It's of secondary importance to them that it's for a good cause."
This article was first published in The Independent.