According to the UN, access to electricity is extremely low in some areas of African countries like Kenya, where only 3 people out of 20 have power. Schools in rural areas generally have no access to a reliable power source, and other alternatives such as diesel or solar panels are an expensive alternative, and therefore not ideal for IT. In an attempt to provide pragmatic and adapted computing solutions in areas where electricity remains a challenge, Computer Aid International set out to identify what computer solutions were available and appropriate to rural African settings. Read the Computer Aid report on the five top-scoring low-cost, low-power computers or read more about it in an “online review by ZDNet”:http://reviews.zdnet.co.uk/hardware/0,1000000323,39363065,00.htm.

“The principles that I learned in the APC workshop helped me work in resource-constrained environments,” says Alex Gondwe, techie at the Baobab Health Partnership in Malawi. Alex is setting up wireless internet connections between health institutions to improve patient care and HIV/AIDS data collection and he shares his tips here.