Latest News Updates on our work in Ghana and around the world.

We are grateful for the e-mails and letters that we receive from people throughout the world.  We would like to share one that we recently received from Patrick Cusack, EMEA Service Manager – Sharepoint Online at Microsoft.

I am so impressed by your device as it ties in so much with my own thoughts on how Africa can drive its own future.

I am a volunteer and director with a voluntary NGO group in Ireland called Education in Africa. Most of the other volunteers are retired IT execs and I keep them a foothold in business. 100% of funds we raise go directly to education in Africa, the only long term answer to the continent’s problems. Would love to see how we can utilize your devices.

Africa runs the risk of following the West instead of creating its own unique future – using 21st century technology, not 2nd hand 20th century rubbish!

Power production, education, agriculture, water management – these are all areas where Africa should be exploiting today’s technologies – not trying to follow the bad lead that the West would give them.

Cheap, durable technology that does not even require the user to be able to read! If you want to teach a man to grow tomatoes, then you can record that for him, in his own language and with this cheap device he can listen as often as he likes until he understands it. Your device makes so much sense!!

Cheap and durable technology – that is what will work in Africa. The more I look at it the more I see that long term, sending old PCs to Africa is simply sending them the problems we already have with IT.

Do you spend billions and take 10 years inflating the profits of General Electric with a new oil powered generating plant in Central Africa? Why don’t you instead take those billions and supply wind and solar powered solutions at village level. If the sun shines every day and it’s as local as your roof, then why do you want to bring power lines across Africa which at some unknown date in the future some terrorist will blow up? If you can create a green solar powered fridge or oven, do you need an Aga or Siemens product?

Why spend billions on big water projects if local wind powered pumps can deliver dependable water locally? Pumping water over long distances and what do you get………..an opportunity for something to break down, be diverted or be contaminated. Keep it local!

In education – you can have FREE access to Khan Academy http://www.khanacademy.org/ anywhere you have an internet connection, or better still have it all ported onto a server and shipped to a village. You don’t need to buy millions of textbooks, that’s yesterday’s way of doing it!

The answer lies in Keep it Simple.

Africa can plough its own fresh furrow without making the giant conglomerates rich. In time those corporations will adapt to the new model anyway by offering cheap and durable wind/solar/education systems to millions of Africans. Then Africa will not just feed itself, but most likely feeding half of the world as well.

China knows the potential in Africa – but I hope that Africans retain control of their destiny, otherwise they are headed for another century of someone else eating their dinner.

Keep up the good work!

Many may not know the story behind Literacy Bridge.  On March 1, 2006, Cliff Schmidt was in Atlanta to speak at a technology conference, and had time before the opening session to explore the city. While walking through the city’s neighborhoods, he came across the memorial park and burial site of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.  At that moment, he knew then that he would dedicate his life to social justice.

He immediately embarked on an intense self-study on global poverty, and soon left his career as an open source software consultant. He planned a six-week trip to a remote corner of rural Ghana and decided to go with specific education project ideas to discuss while he was there. Prior to the trip, he volunteered with One Laptop Per Child, but, when he researched Ghana’s education budget, he found that, with a budget of less than $60 per student per year, the government couldn’t afford laptops. In response, he thought about low-cost technology to improve literacy and brought with him off-the-shelf digital recorders and cheap children’s audio toys for testing and feedback. While discussing the idea of a low-cost audio device with everyone he met, health and agriculture experts convinced him that such a device could vastly and immediately improve their ability to distribute practical information, which was expensive to deliver in rural areas and often forgotten soon after it is heard. In September 2007, he returned from Ghana and founded Literacy Bridge. After 16 months of field research, engineering R&D, feasibility studies, discussions with Ghanaian organizations, and with the help of a cadre of volunteers and donors, the Talking Book Program was launched in the Upper West Region of Ghana.