I enjoyed Leach and found the evidence of value-added from ICT in rural education convincing in subjective terms.  However, the paper raises many issues and resolves few.

• The primary problem is the eternal question ‘what is education’.  Leach’s research is mainly qualitative and while value is described in subjective terms, there is little objective evidence (except anecdotal reports of better exam marks).  The evidence seems to reinforce other studies which show that online learning provides more engagement and deeper understanding but little better performance in summative assessment (particularly of the ‘fill in the answer’ type typical in Africa).  Many would argue that this deeper understanding reflects improved pedagogy but it doesn’t pay the bills or convince politicians the way exam results do.
• Some of the answers seem oblique to the challenge.  The challenge that food and penicillin were more important than ICT was answered by evidence that reading and writing were improved.  Well not for the kids who had starved to death or died of infection first!
• The cost benefit challenge is similarly answered illogically.  Value was described as the production of posters and notices which could just as easily have been written by hand.  The use of the printer as a photocopier does not provide much evidence of the power of ICT in education!

There was however, a lot of good information.  Certainly the evidence that people, however unsophisticated, could use and get value from technology was useful to rout the Luddite arguments.  The evidence that goods would be protected from theft and damage if they were sufficiently valued was also interesting.

The most convincing argument seemed to be the last – that technology was shrinking the world, so making these remote people less remote and enabling them to access education otherwise unavailable to them.

Overall, the paper is convincing that ICT in education, if done well – with the right equipment, the right content, the right pedagogy and some access to support – can produce improved educational results.  However, with all those qualifications I am not sure the arguments would convince the doubters.  There is so much alternative evidence of technology-led initiatives which have failed to have much impact that these beacons of isolated good practice may be seen as only that, not evidence of general opportunity.