Twelve-year-old Rita Lesina treks more than 1.5 miles every morning over a dusty, rugged road in Laikipia County, Kenya. The crunch of dry murram road underfoot and the occasional bird chirp break the silence of her 30-minute walk as she weaves between acacia thorns and dried riverbeds. There are no tarmac roads and no power lines.
When Rita arrives at Enai Kishomi Primary School in Timau, she adjusts the strap of her worn backpack and brushes brown dust off her uniform before taking her seat. Her hands hover slightly over the desk, not fidgeting, just ready to receive a tablet.
Before second grade, Rita had never seen a computer. But everything changed when digital learning came to her rural public school.
“The first day I saw one, I was shocked,” she said.
Enai Kishomi and a few neighboring schools have become technological oases in a tech desert. They use tablets—locally called “Specktrons”—loaded with lessons, videos, animations, and real-time quizzes. Lewa Wildlife Conservancy helps fund the initiative.
In 2020, fewer than half of Kenya’s schools had internet access. One in four primary schools had working internet connections. Only 67 percent of Kenyan children ages 12 to 17 had internet access in 2022. In contrast, the US National Center for Education Statistics reported that 97 percent of American students ages 3 to 18 had internet access at home in 2021. Enai Kishomi is the only school near Rita that has internet.
The digital gap remains wide, but Specktrons are helping change that.
Last week, Rita’s science class explored the human circulatory system, but not with textbooks. Her head teacher, Mathew Munyi, showed the students a 3D animation of blood flowing through the heart. With a tap of his finger, Munyi projected the content onto the classroom’s digital board.
“Now imagine this heart belongs to you,” he said.
According to Munyi, teachers undergo rigorous training to adapt to the technology. Teachers have to be ready to respond to glitches in the classroom.
“Teaching digitally demands more,” Munyi said. “If your system crashes or your content isn’t ready, the lesson dies.”
Digital learning takes more than just tablets—schools may also need a projector or smart board, solar-power units, and teacher training. A full technology setup can cost around $15,000 USD. One company sells classroom kits with 40 tablets and a Wi-Fi device for $5,000 USD. Solar batteries and car-battery backups supply the power to charge the tablets in areas the national electric grid hasn’t reached. However, the real challenge lies in maintaining the devices.
“When a tablet breaks, it can take weeks to fix,” Munyi said. “Donors often fund the initial equipment but rarely the repairs, and so parents are asked to contribute toward maintenance, which many can’t afford.”
Harsh rural conditions—dusty air and high heat—often cause malfunctions in the fragile technology, especially when schools lack proper storage. Schools rarely have technical support staff, so teachers are left troubleshooting devices during valuable class time.
Christian churches and nonprofits are slowly beginning to step in to help with the tech transformation. In 2022, Kenya Methodist University launched a Christian educational-technology outreach targeting rural Methodist-run schools. Some Christian nonprofits have begun handing out smart boards and virtual reality goggles to church-run schools. Still, most efforts focus on food, health, or general education, not technology.
While debates rage in the US about digital distractions in the classroom and shrinking attention spans, Kenyan teachers look to technology as a lifeline. According to Lewa Wildlife Conservancy’s director of education, Purity Kinoti, the main concern in Kenya is access, not excess.
“Digital skills have been identified by researchers as one of the most important skills that every school leaver will need to thrive in the job market,” Kinoti said.
Still, the Specktrons come with precautions. Supervisory access to the tablets allows teachers to keep the lessons moving and students on task. Parental control settings on the devices help limit the kind of content students can access. As internet access becomes more available to children, government regulations are kicking in too. In April, the Communications Authority of Kenya released new guidelines for protecting children online.
For now, Specktrons are helping Rita and her rural Kenyan classmates reach for some of the same goals that students in Nairobi (the capital) or New York are aiming for. Rita told CT her dreams don’t end with sixth grade. She wants to be a pilot.
And a few taps on a tablet can show her exactly what a cockpit looks like.
