Millions wasted on failed ‘One Child, One Tablet’ project in Gauteng

“In this country, by 2018, there is going to be one child, one tablet; one teacher, one laptop; and one classroom, one interactive board.”

These were the words of Gauteng Premier Panyaza Lesufi when he was the MEC of Education in the province in 2015.

Yet, over seven years past its deadline and billions spent, the initiative fell well short of its targets, with the once-loud project quietly swept under the rug.

According to a recent Parliamentary report, 163,679 learner tablets have been distributed to date, well short of the millions in the province’s public education system.

The Gauteng Department of Education (GDE) has long punted a paperless education system, particularly in township and rural schools.

The future workforce is expected to be highly reliant on technology, making it important for learners to acquire skills that are needed in the evolving work environment.

However, in the current educational landscape there is a large digital divide between learners in Quintile 4 and 5 schools and those from low-income households in Quintile 1 to 3 schools.

These learners lack access to technological resources, thus widening the gap between them and their counterparts from more affluent families and schools.

The “One Teacher, One Laptop, One Learner, One Tablet” initiative was a flagship component of the GDE’s broader “Classrooms of the Future” and “Paperless Classroom” programs, launched in 2015 under former Gauteng Education MEC Panyaza Lesufi.

This was guided by the by the Gauteng ICT and E-Education Strategy of 2014, with an estimated cost of R17 billion.

According to the GDE’s 2015/16 annual report, the goal was to digitise public education by equipping every teacher with a laptop and every learner with a tablet.

This is accompanied by infrastructure upgrades, including smartboards, Wi-Fi (via Ruckus Wireless), fiber connectivity, and 4G data for home use.

This was built on the earlier Gauteng Online project, which cost R2.2 billion but was deemed largely unsuccessful due to outdated computer labs and low utilisation.

The GDE said that it hoped to roll out the project to all Gauteng township and rural schools by the end of the 2017/18 financial year.

Former Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga said at the January 2015 launch of the project that, although expensive, investment in ICT could save large portions of the budget that was used to buy books.

The savings can be used to maintain and roll out ICT throughout the country, the Minister said.

Former MEC Lesufi said that they have taken care with security arrangements around the project, with a coordinated effort between police and the community to safeguard the equipment.

“We have put the most sophisticated tracking devices in all the tools. The police are trying to put one in one of their systems as well. So if you take a tablet from a child, we will be in a position to track it back, anywhere in the country.” 

The rollout of the ICT initiative in Gauteng

In 2015, it was initially launched in seven pilot schools with Huawei tablets, smartboards, and Wi-Fi; expanded to 375 Soweto schools with ~65,000 tablets and 1,800 refurbished classrooms at the cost of roughly R800 million.

Early engagement improved, and of the 32 schools that recorded a 100% matric pass rate in 2015, eight were based in townships where the project had been introduced.

But shortly after the programme was introduced, schools and learners became prime targets when criminals started setting up syndicates in communities to steal smart boards and other ICT devices.

According to a 15 May 2015 statement by Lesufi, over 3,000 tablets distributed to learners had been stolen.

In the 2016/17 financial year, the GDE spent considerable resources buying classroom technology and devices, as part of the initial investment in the e-learning programme.

However, many were not returned. According to Lesufi, between 2015 and 2016, a total of 122 smartboards and 17,520 tablets were stolen.

A tracking company contracted by the education department reportedly revealed that the tablets were either stolen from pupils, sold or pawned by pupils on the black market, or offered as collateral to secure loans.

Nearly R8 billion over seven years

An analysis by the Government Technical Advisory Centre (GTAC), an entity of the National Treasury, showed between 2016/17 and 2022/23, the GDE spent over R7.9 billion on the e-learning programme.

While the aim was long punted to be completed by the end of the 2017/18 financial year, it noted that only 26% of schools in the province were beneficiaries of ICT deployment from the GDE by the end of 2022.

According to the GTAC report, there has been persistent underspending in classroom technology, while those related to device expenditure have consistently been overspent.

This pattern suggests that the GDE may be experiencing challenges in planning and managing its e-learning budget, noted GTAC.

One contributing factor could be its approach to outsourcing procurement. While outsourcing offers clear benefits, such as efficiency and timely delivery, it also involves a trade-off between speed and cost control.

In other words, although the GDE can deploy ICT resources to schools quickly, it may have reduced oversight over spending, as the procurement agency could purchase items at prices above the allocated budget.

Since 2016/17, the GDE has outsourced procurement, warehousing, and distribution of e-learning devices to Bongani Rainmakers Logistics (BRL).

GTAC said that this arrangement speeds up rollout, shifts some maintenance risks to BRL, and reduces the need for internal capacity.

However, BRL’s fees are calculated as a percentage of the budget (not actual expenditure), creating weak incentives for cost efficiency.

Fees can reach up to 25% of the budget for learner devices, raising concerns about excessive costs.

Oversight is also limited: trade discounts are not transparently passed on, and it is unclear if fees were benchmarked against industry standards: other provinces negotiated lower management fees (11.5% vs BRL’s 12.5–13.5%).

Between 2018 and 2023, BRL accounted for 91% of all purchase orders by value.

However, GTAC noted that R3.3 billion in purchase orders lacked proper service descriptions in Systems Applications and Products (SAP), making it unclear what was bought.

Weak data capture and the use of group codes hinder accountability, as approvals cannot easily be traced to individuals, said GTAC.

Despite large-scale purchase, the GDE had not consistently leveraged bulk discounts. Prices of laptops and tablets rose 23% and 17% (2017/18–2022/23), outpacing inflation.

Benchmarking shows GDE paid above-market rates for LED boards (+26%) and laptops (+22%), costing R47.9 million in potential savings: enough to buy an additional 6,485 learner devices.

Gauteng generally has better school ICT access than other South African provinces, with proportionally more equipment, and better connectivity.

However, GTAC emphasised that significant disparities exist within the province, and the rollout has fallen short of its promises.

According to a 2024 report by the NCOP’s Select Committee on Education, to date the roll-out of ICT infrastructure in the province was reported by the GDE as:

• 605 schools benefitted from ICT roll-out including 22 teacher centers;
• 14,762 classrooms are ICT enabled;
• 23,162 laptops for teachers have been distributed to date;
• 163,679 learner tablets have been distributed to date;
• 9242 teachers have completed onboarding and mediation training;
• 521 schools are connected to a wide-area network (WAN).

This tablet distribution to date is well short of the 2.8 million learners currently enrolled in Gauteng schools, making the “one student, one tablet” promise out of reach.

Despite repeated attempts over several weeks, neither the GDE nor Lesufi’s office responded to any queries from Newsday.