Microsoft to bring online solutions to Rwanda’s education

The Minister of Education Prof. Silas Lwakabamba (C) addresses the press at the signing of the MoU as Todd Haugen (L) and Nasser Elaawar from Microsoft look on

The American multinational, Microsoft Corporation is seeking to bid a deal with government of Rwanda to create an education platform that will improve quality among Rwandan students and their teachers.

The deal include rolling out office 365 cloud and offline solution to all students in Rwanda and then to create digital IDs to each of the 3million students in Primary and secondary education, to allow them share devices, with each having his/her own account.

“Students will be able to use their own or their school’s devices to log in and access course handouts,” says Nkubito Bakuramutsa, the ICT advisor in Ministry of Education.

While receiving the Microsoft Corporation officials coming for project study in Kigali on March 25, Silas Lwakabamba, Minister of Education said the program comes to complete the One Laptop per child. The latter distributed 250,000 free laptops, each costing $200, to 450 public schools.

Another part of the proposal is to avail a full broadband to the University of Rwanda, Huye Campus and to other schools around that campus, including GS Officiel Butare.

Rwanda is implementing an ICT for education master plan with four pillars, including infrastructure development, digital materials.

Other pillars are training of teachers and students to use these devices, and maintenance of devices, which will be the main intervention of Microsoft in Rwanda.

Declining to divulge how much the two projects’ components will cost, Bakuramutsa said Microsoft offered to charge reasonable price, adding however, “Buliding a Rwanda’s education platform is costly.”

Nasser Elaawar, the partner strategic architect at Microsoft Corporation said “Our project is set to create more jobs in the long run since quality of education will prevail.”