On August 4, 2006, thousands celebrated as secondary students in three schools in and around Kampala, Uganda were provided with a new link to the future, courtesy of a consortium led by AMD and the 50x15 initiative. As part of 50x15, AMD joined hands with the Ugandan Government, the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) and 13 additional organizations as part of the company’s commitment to connect 50 percent of the world’s population to the Internet by the year 2015. Led by African Heads of State and the African Union, NEPAD’s e-Schools Programme is aimed at equipping all African schools with ICT tools to ensure African youth graduate with the skills necessary to fully participate in the information society and knowledge economy.

"The importance of this amazing launch to 50x15 and its partners stretches well beyond Uganda’s borders," said Dan Shine, Director of the 50x15 initiative, "the successes and lessons learned here will be leveraged in deployments within the five remaining countries, but will also be documented and published. Only by applying this knowledge in Learning Labs around the world, and then replicating and scaling successful solutions will we demonstrably accelerate our efforts to connect the world."

The AMD-led consortium is responsible for 18 of more than 100 secondary schools playing host to NEPAD’s e-Schools Demonstration Project – a critical initial step in the Africa-wide implementation of the NEPAD e-Schools Initiative. In the works are AMD deployments in Gabon, Mali, Burkina Faso, Senegal and Camaroon.

The 50x15 Ecosystem Approach

The success of the deployments comes as a result of aggregating a complete ecosystem of local, regional and global technology organizations in addition to NGOs and governments that provide hardware, software and infrastructure expertise, complemented by the schools’ governing boards, principals, teachers, administrators and students. Through these deployments and the overall NEPAD Initiative, teaching, learning and administration at these schools are all enhanced. Students and teachers are empowered with ICT skills and knowledge and digital resources enable an overall increase in health literacy. The added technology also facilitates increased efficiency in the schools’ management and administration systems.

"It is imperative that we continue to provide our students and teachers with Internet access and computing capabilities to enhance their educational experiences here in Uganda," said Minister of Education Namirembe Bitamazire. "The effects of these deployments will be felt by students and teachers alike immediately. It is our hope that these technology solutions will help empower students with the skills and knowledge they need to achieve great success in the digital world."

Two solutions from the growing 50x15 technology portfolio have already been deployed in the Ugandan schools. Rugged, virus and spyware-resistant Personal Internet Communicators (PICs) provide students at a secondary school in Kampala with computing capabilities and Internet access. In Mityana, a town about 90 minutes west of Kampala, and Luwero, a town about two hours north of Kampala, Inveneo low-power devices based on the Wyse thin-client solution enable students with similar capabilities. These solutions are complete, and even include battery back-up, an important feature when the schools only get power two to three days a week!

Namirembe Bitamazire, Uganda’s Minister of Education presided over the launch event, with many teachers, students and parents from the schools also in attendance. The AMD-led Consortium helped prepare the secondary school teachers to use the new classroom technology during a special training session held earlier that week.

The AMD NEPAD consortium includes Agile Learning, Asbis, Cisco, Computainer, I Direct, InterSat Africa, Inveneo, Learnthings, Microsoft, Multichoice Africa, and NewSkies Satellites. In addition to the consortium, these particular deployments also include involvement by Linux Solutions and BushNet, both Ugandan IT and connectivity companies.

For more information on the installation and setup of this lab, download the complete learning lab capsule. The "capsule" document provides details on the full implementation of this lab.