Analysis of the One Laptop per Child initiative’s XO laptop ideologies and application

OLPC-XO. Image credit: oplc.com

One of the hot topics of debate within African development over recent months has been the budget laptops created for the educational purposes of the poor, specifically within emerging market countries.

This article is going to focus on the ‘XO‘ also referred to as the ‘$100 laptop’, developed by the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) initiative in the US.

Firstly, I want to give a brief overview of the product ideology and specification.

The XO vision is, as quoted from Professor Nicholas Negroponte the project leader (who is on leave from MIT, where he co-founded the famous MIT Media Laboratory):

‘It’s not a laptop project. It’s an education project.’

It is stated that the aim of the project is not to provide computer literacy, but to improve education. Computer literacy will come as a by-product of this, according to the laptop.org site.

The project is not-for-profit, and was funded by multiple corporations including Google, Inc.

An excerpt from the laptopgiving.org website defines the project mission as:

‘…To provide a means for learning, self-expression, and exploration to the nearly two billion children of the developing world with little or no access to education. While children are by nature eager for knowledge, many countries have insufficient resources to devote to education—sometimes less than $20 per year per child (compared to an average of $7,500 in the United States). By giving children their very own connected XO laptop, we are giving them a window to the outside world, access to vast amounts of information, a way to connect with each other, and a springboard into their future. And we’re also helping these countries develop an essential resource—educated, empowered children.’

The XO laptop itself is light and around the size of a textbook with a long battery life. The screen can be swivelled around, which is designed to optimise use for traditional laptop work, gaming and e-books. It can be charged by a variety of means, for example car batteries, solar, foot or the traditional power source. It is designed for durability, with features such as a rubber-sealed keyboard, extra thick casing and ‘bumpers’, and is estimated to last at least five years, after durability testing. Also, the screen is designed to be visible in direct bright sunlight.

Other built-in peripherals apart from the keyboard (which is available in multiple languages), include a game pad, touch pad, speakers and microphones, wireless networking and video camera. Connectors built-in are USB, microphone, headphone, memory card slot and obviously power.

It does not have an internal hard drive, as this was assessed to be the most likely part to break.

The software provided is all open-source, uses a Linux Operating Systems, with support for multiple programming languages, which is designed to allow developers and users the maximum amount of freedom and ability to develop as possible.

It sells for around US $188 plus shipping, although currently they have a ‘give one get one’ campaign.

Now, in terms of the success of distribution of the product, the XO is not doing well so far.

However, the first mass sale of the XO’s was confirmed recently, when Uraguay signed up to buy 100,000 of them. But, Nigeria, Libya and Pakistan, all of whom had pledged to buy the XO on mass have instead turned to the Classmate PC, developed by Intel and Microsoft.

The Classmate PC is the closest competitor to the XO, but has many differences. The most significant ones appear to be that it runs Windows (or can run Linux), has a hard drive, and therefore has ‘real PC’ capabilities (as the Intel website puts it), does not have features such as cameras or gamepads, and has been developed as part of Intel’s World Ahead Program (World Ahead Program website), which also runs other projects such as teacher trainings, digital inclusion programs, the Skool technology development (an online digital learning tool to improve teaching and encourage collaboration between parents and children and teachers and pupils). The Classmate PC costs between US $230- US $300.

There have recently been other low-cost laptops released, in October Taiwan’s Asustek released one priced at £125 and MITAC (also from Taiwan) has announced intentions to release their equivalent soon.

The reasons stated by Libya and Nigeria as to why they are buying the Classmate PC rather than the XO are that they were affected by the increased cost from the promised $100 to 188, and there were concerns over servicing, teacher training and future upgrades of the product.

Due to problems such as this, the XO sales strategies have had to change significantly to attempt to increase sales. The minimum number allowed to be bought has been lowered, and the ‘Buy one get one’ concept was introduced.

When these facts are considered, it is no wonder really that Intel is winning. Now that the cost of the two laptops are so similar, countries are clearly going to buy the version that they trust, with big names such as Intel and Microsoft, where they feel secure that the long-term issues with the purchases are covered. There are instantly other issues with the XO that spring to mind, such as - Why are a video camera and gaming pad essential? Surely removing these would have brought down cost. Why does the screen really need to swivel? Most laptops don’t, and they are used for a multitude of purposes. Why are they only expected to have a lifespan of 5 years? To emerging market countries, they would be investing a lot of money, why would these products not be upgradeable and serviceable to make them last longer? Why is gaming considered important, when educational gaming in the developed world is still not particularly successful? And this argument of why there is no hard drive seems to not really hold up, surely a better process would have been to design a hard drive that was more durable (which could perhaps have been dealt with cost-wise by removing other features) .

To go back to the issue of the XO versus the Classmate PC, somewhat ironically, Intel and Microsoft only began development of their low-cost laptop due to their fear that the OLCP project would corner an area of the market before they did. As said in article ‘A Lesson for BoP Technologists: Put the Business Model First‘, it is due to OLPC development that there is a focus on lower-cost technology. So, credit where credit is due, there is no doubting that this is a positive step forward. Professor Negraponte does also state that he is not concerned about the fact that the Classmate PC may outsell his XO, because, as mentioned previously, his aim is to improve education, and as his version is non-profit, he won’t really lose out as a profit-driven product would.

However, all this discussion about which laptop is selling better, and what exactly they do is really beside the point. Whilst all these factors are important in terms of the technology itself, perhaps the issues of the environment surrounding, and users of the product, are the crucial considerations needed for a development project of this type.

This leads me to a recent article from the BBC entitled ‘Politics stifling $100 laptop‘ where a spokesperson for OLPC is quoted against Nigeria’s education minister. The culmination of reading the article was that it made clear the fact that the foundation for the OLPC project, and therefore it’s potential for success, is poor.

To summarise the article, the OLPC has blamed politicians for the lack of sales of the XO, which they put down to a fear of change on the part of governments, due to high risk factors. The project spokesperson, Walter Bender, also stated that there is a need for ‘dramatic change’ in education within countries where education was poor. Apparently, the OLPC think that:

‘…Change has to be dramatic. You’ve got to be big, you’ve got to be bold. And what has happened is that there has been an effort to say ‘don’t take any risks - just do something small, something incremental.’

Nigeria’s answer is to question whether putting laptops into schools where there is a lack of even basic equipment such as tables and chairs is the most appropriate step towards education improvement. They say that:

‘We are more interested in laying a very solid foundation for quality education which will be efficient, effective, accessible and affordable.’

At this point, the author has to wonder where there has been any evidence with development in emerging market countries, where jumping ahead past the immediate issues and attempting to solve them by other solutions has ever been proved to work. In fact, it would appear from looking at evidence of technology projects, and also economic projects such as those dictated by the IMF (International Monetary Fund), that this approach has been proved many times over to be unsuccessful.

So, in support of Nigeria’s response to the issue, it is generally acknowledged that much of the education needed within emerging market countries, and especially Africa, is the very basic requirements, such as reading and writing. And obviously, these can be done with paper, pencils and books, all of which could be provided at a much lower cost that laptops.

In conclusion, the author would argue that the approach the OLPC has taken is clearly wrong, (which is being proved already by the lack of sales), and that there is no excuse for why they have done so, as there is so much evidence against this process of making a big change without consideration for the enabling, or disabling factors surrounding it. In short, nothing exists in isolation.

Relevant Links:

• White African blog post - Nigerian eLearning Program for OLPC and Classmate PC
• African Loft article - Novel Concepts Are Great, But…
• Nextbillion.net article - The Tradeoff Between Growth and Innovation at the BOP
• Ashhie.wordpress.com blog post - Low cost Laptops for emerging markets: OLPC, Classmate and others
• Info on 2 Taiwanese low-cost laptops
• Article from San Francisco Chronicle - Emerging markets in BRIC nations are focus of technology firms
• The Classmate PC portal

Article written by Ella Romanos. Blog: Designed For Africa