Every year, Clara Gregori gathers up old, discarded laptops from friends, family, and local businesses, stuffs them into a suitcase, and flies from her home in Catalonia Spain to a students’ residence in Senegal, where those computers are given a second, and even a third, life. This time, Clara headed with a suitcase full of repurposed gear to set up a solar-powered computer lab in the savannah.
It seems obvious that computers should be more repairable, but if you’ve got a manufacturer’s service center down the road and the funds to pay, the concept remains noble but abstract. But in Senegal, repairability and inter-compatibility are significantly more essential. A MacBook on the savannah is useless once its SSD dies, or its RAM starts glitching out. And a computer that cannot easily be opened to clean its fans won’t last long in a dusty country.
The project is a part of the PUSA Foundation, a small NGO that carries out small, local projects in and around the Mbackombe village in Senegal. These include building schools in places where kids can actually reach them, well-digging, and programs promoting the education of young girls.
In previous years, Clara has reconditioned laptops, tablets, and phones for the foundation’s residence in the nearby city of Mbour. This residence houses students who could otherwise not attend the nearby schools and universities, and the donated, fixed-up laptops are used by these students, as well as the teachers.
These reused computers mean that university students can own their own computers, instead of relying on the university’s computer room, which is as ancient and as hard to access as you might imagine. The education system has already moved from paper to PDF as source material, but that’s actually worse for students if they have no way to read those PDFs out of school.
This year, Clara worked on setting up a new computer lab in the Ecole Privée Laïque de Mbackombel school, situated in the savannah. The room already has solar panels to power it, although the electronics needed to run them won’t arrive until the end of the year. Solar is a good choice, as it can power the lab throughout the year, apart from the rainy season from July to September, but the school is closed then anyway.
The lab will be stocked with Windows laptops, which will be used by anyone taking classes that day. The small facility will be looked after by a former student named Ibou (in the photo below) and will be expanded in future as needed.
Reconditioning the Old Laptops
Getting laptops ready for use by the students and teachers in Senegal has some special challenges. The first is that you can’t just scrub them clean and install Linux. Linux can run fast and easy on old hardware that creaks and groans under Windows. But students are being prepared for a business world that runs on Windows, so that’s what they’ve asked for—and that’s what they get.
This in turn means providing enough RAM for the OS. This latest batch of around 20 HP laptops, donated as a job lot by a local business, are pretty ancient in computer years, and had just 4 GB RAM. As not all the computers were required at once, Clara and her partner Xavi pulled the sticks from some of the machines to boost the others to 8 GB. They also hit up family and friends to search their junk drawers for old DDR 3 RAM.
iFixit also donated RAM, which will arrive in the school soon, and we also sent some iFixit Pro Tech Toolkits to live in the lab.
Laptops are preferred even in the fixed computer lab because they have a built-in battery backup. While the solar setup should ensure constant power, other schools, and students’ homes, might not be so reliable. Ideally the batteries should be good to use for extended periods, but even ten minutes is enough to smooth out janky power sources.
Speaking of power, let’s look at proprietary power supplies. Modern computers can mostly be powered via USB-C power delivery. Older computers cannot, and mismatched power supplies can mean the difference between keeping a computer running, and having to trash it. A power replacement power brick might cost $30, but that’s expensive in this situation. If all the computers used a standard supply, then keeping a student’s laptop running would be as easy as grabbing another one from the pile. Otherwise, the computer is useless.
The most common repair for these computers is cleaning the fans. The dusty savannah, and almost-as-dusty city and villages, mean that the fans get gummed up fast. There will be two locals running the lab—the English philosophy graduate and English teacher Djibril, and former student Ibou, who was already an iFixit user. They will have to open up the computers to clean them so they don’t overheat and eventually die. In some of the machines, this is as easy as opening an access hatch. In others, you’re looking at an almost complete disassembly, including removal of the keyboard.
On this small-ish scale, time isn’t really a problem, but a full disassembly is obviously riskier than just popping the hatch and blowing and brushing out the dust.
Even the lesson plans are reliant on the kinds of computers available. Clara says that, as the lab’s laptops will remain in place, shared among that day’s students, they originally thought about giving each student a USB stick for their work and PDFs. But those can be lost, so instead they opted for modular courses, where the student can grab any computer and use it for that particular module.
There’s more. Smaller computers are preferred, as you can fit more of them into a suitcase. Honking 17-inch gaming PCs are out. Ultrabooks are in.
While Clara, along with Djibril, and the the head of the residence Celine, are the force behind this program, there are other visitors throughout the year who also bring hardware for a second life. And it doesn’t even end there.
When a student or teacher’s laptop really does get too old for the job, perhaps taking five minutes to boot, or it just has too little RAM to run Windows, the team installs Linux, and gives the computers to locals to use at home, or for whatever they like. Unless you really need to use Windows, then Linux really is the best OS for old computers. I have a 2012 MacBook Air that runs amazingly on Manjaro Linux, for example, to the extent that I added a new brand new battery and now it’s in daily use.
Reusing old laptops in Senegal is a perfect example of why devices should be repairable, why they should use standard parts, and why legislation like the EU’s laws to make USB-C the standard for charging is essential. It extends the useful life of these devices by many years, and puts them into the hands of people who wouldn’t otherwise have a computer.
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