I will show how our NGO provides Uganda primary and secondary schools with computers, installs computer labs and facilitates their connection to the Internet with a minimum of donor funding by collecting a modest fee from each school, according to the amount of equipment it requests, i.e. around $1900 for a school lab with ten, mostly Pentium Is and PII for SuSE Linux server, with switch and laser printer; twice that for a twenty-computer lab. Fees pay for project personnel, preparation and distribution of equipment (schools arrange own transport), installation of school computer lab LANs, administration, purchase of computers, printers, networking and other equipment and shipping. Network training workshops are provided for selected teachers and students at education ministry headquarters for an additional fee.
Internet in this land-locked country is by satellite through earth station, distributed to schools via partner or third party companies by: dialup, both land line and GSM, fibre optic (Kampala schools), and broadband wireless, 2.4 and 3.5 GHz microwave, the latter a CDMA technology used by the Second National Operator (SNO) mostly for wireless local loop voice, is cost-efficient for data, and (by a third party ISP) an adaptation of WiFi for wireless WANs. Schools connected by broadband pay around $250 monthly for 32k/64k, on a per-school term basis; connectivity provided at the beginning of term after payment. Schools open their labs to parents and public after hours, providing a valuable community service and source of income to the school.
The mail server has been built by ISP partners to accommodate domain names and webmail of every school, and includes a .live. interface for registration of names set and set up of webmail accounts. Head teachers at schools that do not have electricity or that are not connected to the Internet can receive SMS notification on their mobile phones by Internet about email that has been sent to their webmail accounts.