To cite another example of poverty vs education. I met the Head Teacher of a primary school the other day. His current problem is related to previous drops in coffee prices. As a result, the farmers surrounding his school have not had sufficient income. Hence they are not able to pay the USD300 per annum to put each of their children through school. Which is also putting the existence of the school at risk – which services 350 students at maximum enrollment. To put the 300 / annum into perspective, another friend here who is a cleaner for the government earns approx. USD65 / month. Atleast USD15 is spent on getting to and from work / month. Multiply by 12 and you have USD600 per year. Take food, health, housing, (and tax), etc into account and the fact that the estimated average number of children per woman is 4.62, they barely have sufficient funds for 1 child to be educated. And the choice of who goes to school is probably highlighted well by the significant difference in literacy rate between boys (77.5%) and girls (62.2%).

There is an NGO called “Reading” (if I recall correctly) which I will write a separate piece on. They take unwanted books from the west and container them over to Africa to donate. It is such a simple concept and is a great idea. A couple of issues – again the kids have to be in school. And sometimes, the books are not used as frequently as they should be because the are worth so much to them, they don’t want them to be destroyed / to get dirty / etc.

One thought for you Carl, when you get globaleditors up and running, Rogasian (and similarly motivated students) would benefit from having a pool of volunteer editors help him improve his english, whilst he writes stories (from his perspective on life) to be published on the blog.

Great piece about William Kamkwamba in Malawi. Excellent initiative and also glad to see an example of the “one computer per child” making it around.