OLPC Project To Air-Drop Laptops 130
sl4shd0rk writes "Nicholas Negroponte and the OLPC project are still going and have a new plan in the works: a laptop air-drop to help facilitate 'self-education' in areas with large poor populations. 'In the first year we'll go in and meet with tribal elders and aid organizations, people not involved with education, but then we let the kids learn,' Negroponte said. All of this work by Negroponte and others was essential, he explained, because market forces were leaving the poor of the world behind. Meanwhile, the largest countries had adopted strategies that offer little for the developing world."
Re:I hope so, which I say without any shame. (Score:5, Interesting)
There's a rising tide of African voices that agree with you since most of that aid never leaves the capitals of the nations being "helped".
Other times the aid ends up trashing the local economy since aid agencies are quite often less concerned with the results of their efforts then with shaking down rich donors.
Re:Hit and run approach (Score:4, Interesting)
Oh, it's worse than that. From the very start, the OLPC laptop has been designed primarily to comply with Negroponte's political IT views. The poor of the world are just a means to that end.