The Kenyan government has suspended its over Ksh 17 billion plus school laptop project which was announced by president Uhuru Kenyatta and his deputy in 2013 as a campaign promise.

The Jubilee Laptop Programme or Digital Literacy Programme as it was commonly known promised to distribute laptops to Class One kids in Kenya’s 25,000 public primary schools in the first three years of existence. However, by mid last year only about 19,000 public primary schools had received the tablets causing the Ministry of Education to suspend the project and instead build a computer laboratory per school.

“There has been a policy change in programme from one child-one laptop to the construction of computer laboratories for ICT integration,”
Principal Secretary Dr. Belio Kipsang told the National Assembly’s Education Committee.

The failure of the project has been due to cost implications, poor implementation due to lack of ICT skills capacity in many primary schools, and shift to provision of basic learning materials to all.

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