NABDAM DISTRICT, Ghana, January 1, 2020 — Representatives of media outlets are invited to attend as the African Bicycle Contribution Foundation(ABCF), which had distributed a total of 500 free Ghanaian-made bicycles, since 2016, to under-resourced, rural students, teachers and small farmers, in 12 locations across Ghana, completes its strategic transition to distributing computer labs in the country’s rural public schools. The first such computer lab distribution will take place on January 2, 2020, at the Girls Model School, in the former forecourt of Kongo Senior High School, in Nabdam, in Ghana’s Upper East Region.
At its 2016 inception, the foundation announced that, after successfully raising funds for bicycle distribution, it also planned to “initiate educational-focused, technology-facilitated dialogues for students and business owners, between Ghanaian and U.S. students.”
In the fall of 2019, the foundation’s leaders decided it was time to move to that second phase of its mission.
Under its new “Collaboration for IT and Communications Excellence” program, the foundation reached out to the Girls Model School, where it had distributed 50 bikes to students in July 2018, to explore launching its computer lab initiative, there. Previously, the Girls Model School had no classes focused on ICT.
Ghana’s Nabdam District, bordered on the north by Burkina Faso, and on the east by the Republic of Togo, is the least urbanized region in Ghana. Less than 16 percent of the population resides in urban areas, and about 28.5 percent of adults are classified as illiterate. The purpose of establishing the Girls Model School, in 2015, was to identify and educate needy, but brilliant, girls from the district, who were moving to junior high school.
With the computers, related equipment and large-screen monitor to be provided by “The Collaboration,” the school’s administrators have already begun to carve out space in its existing facilities for its first computer lab.