Tech Bridges to Malawi — The Hardy Bunch Foundation's School-by-School Connectivity Drive in Kasungu

Tech Bridges to Malawi (Tech BTM) began in 2017 when retired computer engineers Dow Hardy and Jennifer Gauthier-Hardy, through the US-registered Hardy Bunch Foundation, took a 10-day trip to Kasungu District — a tobacco-growing region roughly 115km north of the capital, Lilongwe — delivering 30 laptops to three schools.

The programme has since expanded to 35 schools, with a stated target of 44 by the end of 2026, and has cumulatively supplied around 1,000 student devices, 84 classroom projectors, 15 Starlink satellite-internet connections and 17 solar power systems. A locally hired team of seven technicians maintains the equipment, and the Foundation reports thousands of hours of teacher training in using the devices and educational software covering mathematics, science and basic logic exercises.

At Nthunduwala Community Day Secondary School, one of the programme's sites, students interviewed by journalists described using a computer for the first time; the Foundation and independent press coverage report rising university-acceptance rates among participating students, alongside accounts of teachers integrating digital tools into lessons.

Reported figures — device counts, connection numbers, acceptance-rate gains — come from the Foundation's own programme reporting, corroborated by independent journalism (allAfrica, syndicated regional press), but no independently audited learning-outcome study has been published; the evidence here is descriptive and self-reported rather than externally evaluated.