Johannesburg — NEXT year, 16-year-old Jane Sekgale will leave school in Bela Bela and try to find a job. Thankfully she is not leaving this year, because until this month Sekgale had never touched a computer, a severe disadvantage when practically every company now expects computer skills as a prerequisite for employment.

Sekgale and her peers at Maope Secondary School now have a year to catch-up and cram in as many hours of computer studies as they can.

In a world where teenagers are generally the whiz kids of computing, Bela Bela is a sad reminder of how far Africa lags behind.

Down the road at the Bosele Drop-In Centre, 200 orphans have even less chance of an education likely to lead to a decent job. The children share seven old computers, and only the co-ordinator, Gloria Ntshangase, and one other helper are able to teach computer studies.

Still, that's an improvement on another local school, where computers donated by the Rotary Club a year ago are standing idle. "The teachers don't have any computer literacy so they can't use them," Ntshangase said. "The donation just went to waste."

Hopefully, Bela Bela's youngsters now stand a slightly better chance of an education fit for the future through an Intel initiative to boost access to information technology. On Monday, Intel chairman Craig Barrett opened a computer lab at Maope school. Microsoft has donated the software and MTN's cellular network provides high-speed internet access. "It's our duty as adults to make sure every child has equal opportunities," said Barrett, who chairs the United Nations' global alliance for information and communication technologies.

"They have to have access to computers and those computers have to be connected to the internet because the internet is where the world's information database resides. This is the first time in history where one person at a desk with a computer can have access to all the information in the world."

Barrett also stopped at a local craft market where Sahara Computers gave wood carver Robert Hlongwane a laptop. VEA Communications is providing internet access and helped him create a website to advertise his wares.

"I am so excited to have my first PC and my children can't wait to use it too," Hlongwane said. "I will be able to reach customers from far away. If I start getting orders from Johannesburg, I will help other Bela Bela craftsman sell their goods."

But watching Hlongwane appear thoroughly daunted by the technology -- and distinctly nervous as a laptop worth R11000 sat on his stall in the impoverished marketplace -- you cannot help wondering how good these ad hoc initiatives will be.

Barrett acknowledged that the new computer centre at Maope School was the same as numerous labs sponsored by other companies across SA. One difference would be a heavy emphasis on training teachers to use technology and following up to ensure nothing prevented it being used efficiently, he said. "Educating teachers is perhaps the most important thing we can do to educate our young people."

The Bosele centre received eight new PCs from Hewlett-Packard and Intel is paying for internet access to help the centre extend its PC training to local adults.

Ntshangase said it was not enough to provide three free meals a day to her AIDS orphans. "It will be an empty programme if it's just food and nothing intellectually challenging for the children," she said. That is why the staff first clubbed together to buy some old PCs. "We started teaching them computer literacy because in this area there are no computer schools or training of any sort. Children end up in the street, but if we can give them a start in the right direction they could be employed as a receptionist or a clerk."

Because Ntshangase and her one computer-literate colleague cannot train 200 children by themselves, they have asked a computer teacher from a local school for disabled to help in the evenings. But he will be thinly stretched, as teachers from the other school also want to come to the Bosele centre to learn how to use the Rotary-donated PCs.

Things are also bad at Maope school. "We have a terrible predicament. We need to teach students to become part of the 21st century and we need to teach them things we don't know," said Este Eindehoven, the IT co-ordinator. "We only needed to be able to read and write and do arithmetic."

Intel's regional manager for sub-Saharan Africa, Jacques van Schalkwyk, said it was tough deciding where to focus its efforts when so many parts of SA were needy.

"We wanted to pick a community where we could incorporate the components of health, education and connectivity and we couldn't go thousands of miles from a logistical point of view. Bela Bela is one of the most needy areas and it's close enough to us for sustainable maintenance."

The donations by Intel, the world's largest chip manufacturer, are part of its $1bn World Ahead initiative to take technology and education to developing countries. Its grand plan in SA is to donate 5000 PCs with Microsoft software and internet access from MTN to 1200 schools by 2010. Equally ambitious is the aim of training all SA's 400000 teachers to use technology to improve the standard of education. So far nearly 43000 have completed Intel's teacher training programme since 2003.