Small budgets hamper local open source developers

A lack of funds has local open source developers at a serious disadvantage in the education sector, which is slowly getting digitized as leading software companies target the African market.

The reality of superior U.S. budgets was demonstrated recently when Cisco, Intel, Microsoft, the government of Kenya and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) announced a $9 million joint commitment by U.S. to improve education in Kenya

The Accelerating 21st Century Education (ACE) project, launched two weeks ago in New York at the Clinton Global Initiative annual meeting, aims to improve the quality of primary and secondary education through the effective use of information and communications technology (ICT), but open source proponents say it is a move to lock students to proprietary software.

"It is widely known that these companies have made the Kenya government sign some skewed contracts that basically aim to propagate their own interests in the market," said Evans Ikua, Chairperson of the Linux Professional Association of Kenya.

The ACE project aims at developing a best-in-class model for deploying ICT in education in 60 focus schools across Kenya. ACE will deploy more than 6,000 networked computers for student and teacher use, train approximately 7,000 teachers to effectively integrate technology in the classroom, train technical support staff at each school to maintain the technology, and deploy a wireless infrastructure within the schools.

"The main aim of such projects is to hoodwink the government with very low prices for the software and by this strategy ensure that all students coming through the educational system know nothing else but these technologies," added Ikua.

Microsoft has received most of the criticism because of its market position. It has several projects with the government.

"The project is part of Partners in Learning Programme and is not about Microsoft Products; it is about promoting innovative ways to transform education in the 21st century," said Mark Matunga, education and community affairs manager for East and Southern Africa at Microsoft.

As a result of its association with major brands, however, the government has been accused of failing to give equal opportunities to open source projects during bidding and implementation. In public-private partnerships, the government has been unable to dictate software specifications because the technology is mainly donated. However, the government hopes to incorporate more open source solutions in the projects it is financing.

"In the 1 million laptop project, we want to separate the cost of software from hardware and inform the public the advantage of using open source. Indeed major software firms wanted a bundled service but we refused," said Bitange Ndemo, permanent secretary in the Ministry of Information and communication.

On its part, the Linux Professional Association has been accused of not doing much to popularize open source software. The organization's Ikua, however, insists that they have held meetings with government officials and teamed up with international open source companies and set up projects in a few schools.

Meanwhile, the ACE project is being spearheaded by USAID, which has several initiatives in the country.

"ACE ties in with our mission to increase access to education, improve the quality of education and raise school enrollment rates for children from marginalized areas of East Africa," said Erna Kerst, USAID Kenya mission director. "We hope this collaboration will encourage more Kenyan children to complete school, improve teacher training practices and enhance professional development for teachers and school administrators with support from USAID."

Over the course of three years, the ACE project is expected to directly benefit an estimated 39,000 students and 7,000 teachers through improved educational infrastructure and training. Kenya's Ministry of Education estimates than an additional 300,000 people will benefit indirectly from the project.