Many of Africa's cities and populous areas are reaping extraordinary benefits from new cellular telephone networks and Internet access. But it will be many years before rural interior areas -- where the majority of Africans live -- follow the cities into the information age. Children there don't even have recent-edition textbooks, much less Web-connected computers.
But help could be on the way in the form of a narrowband but workable technology: one-way delivery of digital information via satellite.
In a test last year at the Mbita Point primary school on the Kenya-Uganda border, 60 youngsters got a taste of what's possible. A Swiss foundation called BioVision installed a satellite receiver at the school, gave out handheld computers running Linux-based software, and downloaded up-to-date curricula from Kenya's education ministry. BioVision says this approach is far cheaper than buying books every year.
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