A bitter pill

At the end of the ICT Best Practice Forum in Ouagadougou the Vice-President of Microsoft Africa can finally hold his speech. He takes plenty of time to tell how philanthropically his company will approach Africa in the coming years. Almost moved to tears he tells about his visit to a college in Ouagadougou, and how he was shocked about the poor (ICT) conditions that these pupils had to cope with. And about the ICT-design awards that he was asked to hand out as part of a Microsoft sponsored contest to a number of teachers in Burkina Faso who managed to distinguish themselves in the field of ICT. And about how proud he was on the fact that these teachers had been able to develop themselves thanks to the Microsoft Partners in Learning (PIL) programme.

Unfortunately the good man was misinformed by the local representative of PIL. The PIL-programme of Microsoft is operating in Burkina Faso since 2004 – or better said: it is barely operating. Since the start, 40 teachers at the most have been trained, and barely anything is noticed of a systematic roll out by the government. Of the ten thousands of computers that Microsoft would ship to Burkina Faso is nothing ever heard anymore. Than again, the government never bought large numbers of Microsoft licences as was agreed upon in the deal between Burkina Faso and Microsoft.

None of the 12 teachers who won a price in the contest supported by Microsoft ever took part in the PIL-programme: the first two awards have been handed out to teachers who took part in the 1-year post-graduate multimedia programme of the French Campus Numérique. And the other 8 award winners are trained as part of an educational training programme provided by our local partner ZCP and supported by us.