IP Democracy: Libya Strikes Pact with One Laptop Per Child

In a move that could make Libyan school children even more digitally connected than their U.S. counterparts, Nicholas Negroponte’s non-profit group One Laptop Per Child has struck a deal with the government of Libya to supply all of the country’s school children with $100 laptops by 2008. MIT’s Negroponte describes the spy novel-like way he cut the deal with Libyan leader Muammar el-Qaddafi.

“When I met with Qaddafi, it had all the mystique and trimmings expected: middle of the desert, in a tent, 50 degrees C. etc.,” Mr. Negroponte, who was traveling to Asia on Tuesday, wrote in an e-mail message. “It took him very little time to find O.L.P.C. appealing as an idea.”

The group has also struck tentative pacts with Brazil, Argentina, Nigeria and Thailand. Negroponte’s program follows on an announcement last month by a rival initiative by Intel, called World Ahead, to bring WiMax technology to a remote region in the Amazon.

WiMax has yet to launch in the U.S. but the 114,000 residents of Parintins, a small town on the Amazon River, now have access to a next-generation, ubiquitous wireless high-speed network. Because so many developing nations are starting with so little in the way of information technology and Internet connectivity, these efforts to bring the poorer nations up-to-speed are actually vaulting them ahead of the developed world, at least in isolated circumstances.

Posted by Cynthia Brumfield on October 11, 2006 8:31 AM to IP Democracy