Deputy President William Ruto launched and inspected the progress of the Digital Literacy Programme (DLP) at Burendwa Primary School in Kakamega County. The Government of Kenya through the ICT Authority has been keen to implement the Digital Literacy Programme using a multi-agency approach that consists of ministries and state agencies. The Programme is being implemented in all the 23,951 public primary schools in Kenya and will deliver over 1.2 million devices by December 2016, thereby setting Kenya on course towards a tech-savvy generation.
Accompanied by the Cabinet Secretary for ICT Mr. Joe Mucheru, the Deputy President said, “We have so far trained 80,000 teachers across all primary schools in readiness for this massive programme. We have also ensured that each school is connected to electricity and so far more than 96% of public primary schools have been connected. This programme will revolutionize the process of learning in this country and put our children to be at par with their global counterparts.”
“Through the program, we have begun preparing our children to be ready to face the challenges of the modern world regardless of where they are in this country,” he added.
Mr. Ruto has joined a long list of Cabinet Secretaries and Principal Secretaries in launching the programme. Since the beginning of the month, Cabinet Secretaries and Principal Secretaries have been visiting public primary schools across the counties to oversee the inspection and installation of digital devices under the Digital Literacy Program (DLP). So far, 23 counties have seen the launch of the programme in the last two weeks with the remaining 24 expected to be launched in the next two weeks.
A total of 832 devices have been installed in 10 schools within Kakamega County. It is expected that a total of 880 public schools will benefit from this programme within the county before the end of December. An additional 139 special schools within Kakamega County will be beneficiaries of this programme.
Also in attendance at the Kakamega launch were ICT Principal Secretaries Eng. Victor Kyallo and Sammy Itemere, CEO Robert Mugo and a host of local leaders.