With 100,000 computers thrown out in Ireland each year, a new charity is reconfiguring and sending unwanted PCs to Africa, writes Karlin Lillington

A common sight in Ireland - a skip full of computers - has led to an innovative programme to get unwanted Irish PCs to African schools and organisations. With more than 100,000 working computers tossed out every year in Ireland, Cormac Lynch figured that they should come to a more purposeful conclusion than ending up in landfill or broken down for recycling.

The former investment banker, who is working on a masters thesis at UCD on using technology to improve teaching and education in Africa, didn't have to look far beyond his own research and experience. He was aware from visits to Ethiopia that one item Africans are very eager to get hold of is computers.

For the teachers at one Ethiopian training college, obtaining PCs seemed an impossible goal in a region where the per capita income is only a dollar a day. Lynch made a pledge to help.

Back in Dublin, he came across a skip of electronics and was struck by the waste - and the irony that such "trash" would be treasured elsewhere. As a result, his organisation Camara was born last summer (www.camara.ie).

Camara (pronounced Kah-MAR-ah), says Lynch, is a West African word that means "he who teaches with experience". The organisation's goal is to round up working computers and peripherals that meet a minimum specification, refurbish them, load them up with open-source software (including the operating system Linux and a bundle of educational software called Edubundu), and get them to Africa.

"My intent at the time was just to send out one shipment to those teachers," he says. But he quickly realised Camara could meet both the needs of Irish organisations - which have unwanted computers they must pay to have collected and recycled - and organisations in Africa.

Camara, entirely run by volunteers, is already working with five Ethiopian groups, ranging from the school of medicine at Addis Ababa University to teacher training colleges, to the Sisters of Mary HIV/Aids orphan centre and the Medical Missionaries of Mary. A chance meeting with a Kenyan postgraduate at the Dublin Institute of Technology has seen additional computers sent out to Mombasa.

A dusty former storage area in an old building in central Dublin serves as the Camara workshop. Computers collected from businesses and universities in the Dublin area are stacked at a loading dock for assessment.

What happens from this point on is the work of former Dell production line technician Eoghan Crosby, who responded to Lynch's appeal on the Nixers.ie jobs website for volunteers who could help refurbish computers and build a website.

The UCD computer science graduate e-mailed Lynch to say he could do both tasks, as he'd also worked in web design before his time at Dell. "I was taking some time off so I had the free time, and thought it was a great idea," he says.

He arrived at the "workshop" thinking it was already partly set up, only to discover a dirty storage space full of debris, he laughs. "We spent the first three weeks with our sleeves rolled up, covered in grease, our faces covered in dirt." Now, however, he has created an improvised production line that may not have Dell's state-of-the-art conveyor belts, robots and white-coated technicians, but does duplicate a stringent testing and rebuild process that proceeds in an orderly fashion across a series of tables.

Each work area has a clipboard and checklist for every task that needs to be done. If parts fail on testing - as they often do with older machines - scattered cardboard boxes of spare parts taken from other PCs usually solve the problem. Next, existing hard- drives are erased to US department of defence standards.

Once the software is loaded, the computer goes through a final "burn-in", where it is over-clocked - or run hard to make sure that the system won't fail even when put under duress. "It's a much smaller scale than at Dell, but the level of quality is the same," Crosby says with a grin.

Crosby says Linux and the other open-source applications are perfect for the uses they will be put to. "It's free, it's bullet proof and future proof - meaning it is highly unlikely to get errors. And when internet access comes to the areas where the computers are, the software can update itself."

Crosby says Camara charges €20 per computer to take them away - lower than the existing recycling options.

"We don't want to give companies any excuse not to give us their computers. We are the lowest cost recycler in Ireland," he says, noting that Camara itself must pay to recycle the computers that don't make the grade. They also send unwanted parts to recyclers, as required by Irish law.

To those who wonder whether computers, rather than financial aid, should be going to such poor regions of the world, Lynch says he was the first to have doubted whether PCs could be useful - hence his thesis.

"I learned from the teachers that this is not about technology at all. It's about education. The question is: is technology a good tool for education? And the answer is: if you can get it cheaply enough, and you can get the connections, it is. One computer can hold a library of information for a school."

He adds: "People have to understand that these computers are not being foisted on to these people. They have asked for them. And, if they have the prospect of getting them, they will find a way to get the connections. Who are we to say they should get aid and not technology? We shouldn't say, 'you have to wait until you're ready enough'."

Camara board member Gary McDarby, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology researcher who is involved in the further development of the Digital Hub and has experience in bringing technology to developing-world areas, says he was sceptical a few years ago about what use a computer might be to developing- world communities.

"But the power of it is quite incredible. Never underestimate the inventiveness and adaptability of the people in these areas. They will find a way to get electricity to where it is needed; they will link up with the local internet cafe. They use their PCs to network, to get international help, to create business plans, to write CVs and to organise Aids education programmes. The thirst for learning was incredible."

Camara is working hard to forge links to NGOs, African organisations and, now, Irish organisations that will donate equipment. But fast-paced growth (they have orders for 900 computers at the moment) means they would like to have a more permanent organisation and structure rather than an all-volunteer system.

Lynch and McDarby say they hope that, with corporate help, they can establish one or two full-time positions at Camara and find a better premises to provide for both the PC refurbishment and an office. Even a van driver would be helpful - Lynch currently goes out to collect the PCs himself.

"There is lots to be learnt and discovered as we move forward. But we all believe that education in the developing world is the key, that technology can play a huge role here and that this initiative in all its guises moves everything in the correct direction," says McDarby.