IT Schools Africa refurbishes decommissioned computers from schools, councils and businesses in the UK.
Programme Director Tim Barnes said: Last year we sent 4,300 computers to Africa and most of them went to Zimbabwe.
The computers are recycled by convicted criminals in workshops in some of the highest security prisons in England. Around 100 carefully supervised prisoners refurbish the computers.
It is work the old lags take very seriously and they do a professional job, processing around 400 computers per month, said Barnes.
They are then sent out to their centres in Africa where they are checked over by technicians before being sent out to the schools.
The scheme started five years ago but the charity was forced to stop sending computers back in 2008 because they were not getting to the schools.
After the power sharing agreement and the change to the US$ we restarted the programme, said Barnes.
This year the charity is hoping to send up to 2,000 computers to the country, most of which go to government schools. At the moment, the majority of the machines have gone to schools in or near Harare, but the charity is working on getting computers distributed to the more isolated areas in the country.
Barnes said: We are not able to give the computers away for free but sell them at a reduced price of US$150. Schools apply to our NGO Computers for Zimbabwe Schools and once they have paid we can send them the computers.
The Charity has also been given some money by the Beit Trust, which pays for the shipping of the computers into the country, and has set up a training centre to help teachers show students how to learn with the computers.
It has been given premises by the Ministry of Education to help with the project. Barnes said they also hope to start putting educational software on the computers so children can learn subjects such as physics and maths.
We have just had a donation from a company in the UK that does physics programmes and we would like a lot more of that, he said.
I visited a school just outside of Harare and the kids there were four to a computer. They were really excited about working on them and really engaged. They were using Excel spreadsheets and showing me how to build graphs and pie charts so they are definitely learning. KJW. For more information about the project go to www.itschoolsafrica.org
Post published in: News