XO is a laptop for children 6-12 years old

XO is a laptop for children 6-12 years old

IMHO this is silly. What's causing damage to Africa is the kleptocracy that's the dominant government form there. A country will get nowhere with a dictator who wants to stay in power even when the population dies due to the effort. You certainly will hear a lot of excuses that the help provided by outsiders is hurting the people.

If you look at other parts of the world, things go quite differently. Asia has developed very significantly during the last decades. There are still poor countries, there are still many countries where the political system is not up to western standards, but at least the dictators are benevolent. They don't kill their own people, like they did in the 60s and 70s.

However, I think the originator of this subthread is right: You should not concentrate on the small children first; if you only have a limited amount of founding, take the students first. The benefit there is higher. It raises the education of the elite, and whatever you think about equal democracy, it's always the elite who sets the direction of a country. When they are stupid, uneducated, and selfish, they will ruin it.

One problem of third world countries is the quality of teachers. Negroponte want to "solve" that problem by skipping the teacher. I don't think you can. By helping the students first, you can create sufficiently good teachers, and it does not really take that long. By the time the OLPC really is a billion unit product, you'll already could have a few million capable teachers.