Good practice

SchoolNet Namibia

Namibia · Windhoek · See the Namibia profile

A Windhoek non-profit connected up to 500 Namibian schools to the internet via open-source Edubuntu labs, refurbished PCs and even solar power, training unemployed youth as technicians — before funding and government relations collapsed, leading to its 2009 dissolution.

500 schools

Schools connected at peak (2006)

1500 schools

Total schools in Namibia

Details

Maturity: Discontinued
Promoter: SchoolNet Namibia (Trust), with Telecom Namibia / XNet Development Trust
Period: 2000–2009
Keywords: school connectivity, digital literacy, ICT teacher training, open-source computing, youth employment

Context

Founded in February 2000, SchoolNet Namibia ran its own ISP, built low-cost 'OpenLab' computer labs on refurbished PCs with open-source Edubuntu, and trained unemployed youth as volunteer ICT technicians to connect Namibian schools, about half of which lacked electricity.

Results

Independent evaluation is unusually good for a programme of this age: a Sida-commissioned assessment and a 2007 World Bank/infoDev survey document growth from about 120 schools connected by 2004 to a peak of roughly 500 of Namibia's ~1,500-1,600 schools by 2006, while flagging that learning outcomes (as opposed to connectivity) were never tracked.

Conclusions

High staff turnover and reliance on volunteers, flagged as sustainability risks by the Sida evaluation, proved prescient: SchoolNet Namibia was voluntarily dissolved by its trustees on 17 July 2009 after losing government favour.

Implementation

Implementation detail (cost, timeline, staffing, conditions for success) is not yet available for this practice.

Data sources

Where this practice's information was retrieved from, and when.

C-NAPSE web research — accessed 2026-07-03
SchoolNet Namibia (Trust), with Telecom Namibia / XNet Development Trust — accessed 2026-07-03
World Bank/infoDev – ICT in Education in Namibia (2007) — accessed 2026-07-03
INASP Infobrief 2 – Empowering Youth and Connecting Schools (Sida-commissioned evaluation, 2004) — accessed 2026-07-03
Wikipedia – SchoolNet Namibia — accessed 2026-07-03

Quality score: 76/100

How is this calculated?

Evidence: Observational / pre–post

Top 23% in this catalogue (573 scored practices)

Scores cluster high, so position within the catalogue is often more telling than the number alone.

Evaluation

Evaluated by C-NAPSE

Score profile — the dimensions behind the score — how it's computed

Innovation level4/5

Combined open-source Edubuntu labs built from refurbished PCs, solar-powered connectivity in six off-grid schools, and a youth-technician volunteer model — an unusually resourceful approach for its 2000-era context.

Sustainability (ongoing)0/1

The organisation was voluntarily dissolved by its own trustees on 17 July 2009 after losing government relations and funding, so the initiative did not continue.

Evaluation evidence1/1

Documented by a Sida-commissioned independent evaluation and a 2007 World Bank/infoDev country survey, both with named methodology and figures.

Demonstrated reach1/1

Multiple independent sources corroborate reach growing from ~120 schools (2004) to a peak of ~500 schools (2006) out of Namibia's ~1,500 total.

Documented learning1/1

The Sida evaluation explicitly documented weaknesses — near-absent school-level data collection and high staff turnover — providing an unusually candid record of what did and didn't work.

Cite this

Evidoria. SchoolNet Namibia. Persistent ID: 358d4709-aec3-4cc9-92c8-9b566850c25c.

Export as decision brief (PDF)

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