Rwanda has a plan to prevent any return to the genocide of 1994: connect 100,000 children to the outside world with their own laptops
Two small boys are standing hunched outside the window of the Groupe Scholaire Kagugu school in Rwanda's capital, Kigali, a cluster of low, shed-like buildings set around a central yard. A sudden tropical downpour is rattling the frame. Heavy droplets stick to the pane, distorting the faces pressed against the glass.
The taller of the boys pulls a tan jacket over his head. But the drenching does not discourage them. Their eyes don't shift. What they want to see, so desperately, is inside the classroom.
It's an object 10 inches square, green, white and rubberised, inscribed with the logo of an X and a filled-in O. There are rows of them: scaled-down laptops in front of every pupil, commanding the silent, rapt attention of the sitting children who have been given them from a cardboard box.
Many of these children have never touched a computer of any kind before; most, indeed, have never seen one. But when these introductory classes are finished, the children will be allowed to take these laptops to their homes, many of which have no television or phone connections. Or even electricity.
The class concludes. Freed from the requirement to sit , the children are all suddenly on their feet handling the computers in the way that seems most natural to them; standing and propping them on chests or stomachs. Prodding with a single hand. Not wanting to give them up.
They laugh and film each other with the laptop cameras or gather in small groups in the dusty yard outside to watch each other playing games. Others crowd around the largely American instructors to bombard them with questions.
I see the same scene in several schools. When I talk to them, the Rwandan children are as shy as children anywhere when addressed by a strange adult. When they do answer it is with a kind of quiet wonder. "I love using it," says Oliver Niyomwungeri, aged 12. "I never saw one of these before. I'm so excited to take it home when we're allowed. I want to do my homework on it. And I want to teach my younger sister how to use it."
