Africa (Libya) - Libya To Buy $100 Laptops for Kids

We put this in the policy section because we're convinced that this is good policy. And of all places (other than here in the United States) to do it: Libya. Why can't it happen in the U.S.? Thought no child was getting left behind?

The government of Libya has reached an agreement with an American nonprofit group to provide inexpensive laptop computers for all of the nation's 1.2 million schoolchildren, The New York Times reported Wednesday.

With the project scheduled to be completed by June 2008, Libya could become the first nation in which all school-age children are connected to the Internet through educational computers, Nicholas Negroponte, chairman of the One Laptop per Child project, told the newspaper. The $250 million deal, reached Tuesday, would provide the nation with 1.2 million computers, a server in each school, a team of technical advisers, satellite Internet service and other infrastructure.

The One Laptop per Child project, which has the support of the United Nations Development Program, aims to provide laptops to school-aged children worldwide -- for about $100 each. It has reached tentative purchase agreements with Argentina, Brazil, Nigeria and Thailand.