Are $100 Laptops needed in Africa?

I've long been skeptical about Nicholas Negroponte's idea of sending $100 Laptops to impoverished children of the world when most of them lack food, water, education and medicine.

...while some critics have suggested that a machine based on the mobile phone model would be more useful, Africans themselves question the entire project.

Marthe Dansokho from Cameroon says that this cheap computer is the result of an insular American-user mind set.

"African women who do most of the work in the countryside don't have time to sit with their children and research what crops they should be planting," she pointed out. "We know our land and wisdom is passed down through the generations. What is needed is clean water and real schools."