In Rural Africa, Tablets Revolutionize the Classroom

BRCK tablets are opening up new learning opportunities for the Samburu tribe women and children in the Kenyan reserve.

About 50 Samburu women are meeting every week to teach and learn at the villages only school. A donation from Kio Kit with tablets help progress the education

A few hours’ drive north of the Kenyan capital of Nairobi in a remote area on the Samburu Reserve, Kiltamany Primary School was bare-bones: a handful of long wooden desks and a stretch of blackboard struggling to serve hundreds of students from the surrounding villages. Now, Kiltamany Primary School has become a shining example of a wireless, tech-enabled classroom, thanks to the budding minds of Kenya’s booming tech community.

Using Kio Tablets designed by Nairobi-based software company BRCK, Samburu children—boys and girls—are learning how to read and do basic math skills, among other educational goals, emphasizing the idea that knowledge is power and widening their future growth. What’s more, Samburu women, whose traditions and customs often keep them at home, are also going to school, setting an example for their children by doing something they’d never been able to do before.

Samburu women that attend the villages school.

How the Generation of African Technology on the Continent?
Before photography I studied economics, a background devoted to telling the story of entrepreneurial spirit in Africa - which highlights the spark of creativity, advancement, and extraordinary minds that are not identical to this continent's stereotypical notions.

The BRCK hardware and software company donated two sets of Kio Kit to their community.

Samburu women starting using tablets and learning how to read, write, add, subtract and now multiply in the last year.

The Kiltamany Primary School during a session with the tablets.

A teacher is walking back home after an afternoon session at the school with fellow women.

A Samburu warrior begins his daily herding with the cattle. He only takes a bottle of water and comes back in the evening.

Samburu warriors whose wives attend the school.

A Samburu warrior in the classroom.

Morning class with BRCK Education and their Kio Kits tablets at Kiltamany Primary School. Headmaster Elijah Njogh, BRCK employee Kevin Fender and translator Jeremiah Lenailoj help conduct the workshop for children.

The multimedia content on the tablets is designed to be easy to use and consists of finding solutions through play

Elders of the community want equal access to education for all their children – boys and girls.

One set of the Kio Kit is reserved for the students at the Kilitamany Primary School.

Every journey starts with a first step. For Kenya and many of the surrounding countries, that journey started with broadband internet. A decade ago, East Africa―and Africa in general―lay in the shadow of the rest of the world, disconnected from the high-speed internet that was crisscrossing oceans, countries, and continents to build an online global community. The region got its first fiber-optic cables installed around 2010, planting the seeds that would allow tech communities to flourish.

A few years later, Kenya’s internet presence grew thanks to the government’s “National Broadband Strategy,” an initiative that aims to roll out and provide quality internet to its citizens.

For the women of the Samburu tribe, technological advancements allowed them to use digital tablets to expand their skills and knowledge, increasing the value of education in this traditionally nomadic tribe.

Samburu women are waiting in front of a classroom to begin a digital multimedia class at the Kiltamany Primary School of the Kalama community in the Samburu National Reserve, Kenya.

I says that his time with the Samburu presented interesting contrasts: One hour, he was photographing a digital classroom. The next, he was back in the Samburu village, where they live a traditional tribal lifestyle.

“It was fascinating to see the clash between culture, technology, and desire,” he says, alluding to the inherent tension of modernity and cultural identity. On one hand, screens are overtaking our lives. On the other, technology can be used as a solution, inspiring and preparing Kenya’s next generation to be part of the global competitive landscape.

Samburu village in the evening.

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/photography/proof/2018/01/africa-technology-samburu-kenya-education/