State students bemoan delays with computer delivery

State-sponsored Rwandan students have bemoaned delays by the government to deliver the computers they were promised as part of a programme to facilitate learning and improve access to information and communications technology among students.

The computers are also meant to counter the restrictions on physical learning caused by COVID-19.

State-sponsored students typically performed well in secondary school but come from poor families that cannot afford tuition and other fees. As students, they get a living allowance from which they must pay for rent, food and necessities.

The programme was launched by the government of Rwanda in 2016 in collaboration with Intel Corporation, mobile telecommunication company MTN, the Bank of Kigali, Africa Smart Investments-Distributions (ASI-D), South American-based technology company Positivo BGH and Microsoft. It gave state-sponsored students laptop computers through a loan facility that was repayable once they had completed their education and had secured employment.

Three years after the launch, however, the programme hit a snag and came to a halt, thus leaving students with a dilemma.

Cedrick Nshimiyimana, a second-year law student at the University of Rwanda’s College of Arts and Social Sciences, has been struggling to accomplish academic assignments due to a lack of IT equipment, especially computers.

“We have been waiting for laptops for almost three years now,” Nshimiyimana told University World News.

“As a government-sponsored student, I am not able to acquire a laptop on my own. My family can’t either. It is so hard for me to accomplish my work without electronic devices, especially a computer. For example, when we are given a certain assignment, we have to borrow a laptop from colleagues; it takes a long time and sometimes it becomes impossible.”

Nshimiyimana sometimes opts for a cyber café to do an assignment. Sometimes he uses his mobile phone to take notes, but he says this is not as productive as having a laptop.

“It’s a big problem because you can’t even do more research. You spend a lot of time looking for someone to lend you a laptop and then have a short time to do your work. Whenever I go to a cyber café, I have to pay and they count per hour, which is costly,” he adds. A cyber cafe typically charges US$1 per hour, which is unaffordable for students who receive a government stipend of US$45 a month.

Nshimiyimana appealed to the government to speed up the process of providing laptops and honour its promises.

“These are loans that we are ready to pay back once we are employed, and we need them to help us, otherwise we are struggling to study. We expect it to be worse next year, when we will be working on the final-year dissertations,” he said.

Nshimiyimana is one of thousands of students who need laptops. At least 7,000 new students are admitted to the University of Rwanda annually, and three intakes have enrolled since the programme stopped.

Too slow to be useful

The Rwandan government initially supplied students with Positivo-BGH laptops which were locally assembled, but they proved to be too slow to be useful.

Positivo laptops were also purchased and distributed to government offices, but sources say the government is now replacing the slow Positivo machines with new hardware.

A source in the ministry of education, who prefers not to be named as he is not allowed to speak on behalf of the department, said the project to acquire Positivo-BGH laptops has failed. The computers are too slow and replacement parts are not readily available.

Rwanda Minister of Education Dr Valentine Uwamariya said the government was aware of the issue. “We acknowledge the dilemma we face in Rwandan education where students lack the necessary IT equipment to support the learning process. The Rwanda government is working on it,” she said.