Raspberry Pi Microcomputers Are Powering A School Computing Lab In Rural Cameroon

The Raspberry Pi microcomputer has already put more than a million Pis in the hands of makers, tinkerers, parents and kids in its first year on sale. Which is an impressive feat for a device that’s designed to get more people dabbling in electronics and thinking about how software works. The Pi Foundation actually wanted to create a device that U.K. kids could cut their coding teeth on. But here’s a sign of how much more potential Pi has, above and beyond its original mission: Pis are being used to power a secondary school computing lab in rural Cameroon.

In a guest post on the Pi Foundation’s blog, a volunteer from a Belgian group that raised the funds to build and equip the school writes how they took 30 Pis out to Cameroon in their suitcase and used them to create a computing lab — along with screens, keyboards and mice bought locally. This Pi-powered computing class is itself powered by an on-site generator since the school is not connected to the public power network.