Laptops Alone Cannot Fix Botswana’s Schools, Landmark Study Warns

When the government of Botswana began handing out laptops to teachers and final-year senior secondary students in 2022, it was billed as a leap toward a digital future. Yet new research from the University of Botswana suggests the machines alone have done remarkably little to change what happens in classrooms. In a study published in Discover Education, Dennis Kealeboga Mabalane and Tshepo Batane examined mobile learning, or mLearning, across public senior secondary schools and found that despite millions in device investment, actual integration of mobile technology into teaching remains limited, inconsistent, and largely disconnected from any coherent policy.

The study matters far beyond Botswana. Governments across Sub-Saharan Africa, from Rwanda to Kenya to South Africa, have poured resources into digital education initiatives in pursuit of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal 4, which calls for inclusive, equitable, quality education for all. The Botswana findings add to a growing body of evidence that handing out hardware is the easiest part of educational transformation and, by itself, among the least effective. What determines success, the researchers argue, is a far messier combination of infrastructure, competence, pedagogy, and governance.

To capture that complexity, the team adopted a pragmatic, mixed-methods design rooted in two complementary theoretical traditions: the Technology Acceptance Model, which explains why people embrace or reject technology, and Social Constructivist Theory, which frames learning as a collaborative, socially mediated process. Quantitative data came from 252 final-year students selected through stratified random sampling, while qualitative insights were drawn from 86 participants, including students, teachers, school managers, information technology officers, and a Ministry of Education and Skills Development representative. The researchers triangulated surveys, semi-structured interviews, focus group discussions, open-ended questionnaires, and direct classroom observations across five schools in four districts chosen to span different levels of urbanization and connectivity.

The infrastructure findings were blunt. Among surveyed students, 69 percent rated internet connectivity as poor or very poor, and only 22 percent reported having operational projectors in their classrooms. Computer laboratories were frequently booked for formal ICT lessons, leaving other classes locked out. One student captured the frustration in a quote that has become emblematic of the study: we have laptops, but without reliable internet they are like typewriters; we can only type assignments, not really learn online. Through the lens of the Technology Acceptance Model, such conditions directly erode what researchers call perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use, the two perceptions that Davis’s classic model identifies as the primary drivers of technology adoption.

Digital competence told a similarly nuanced story. Roughly 60 percent of students expressed confidence using digital applications, but 44 percent said they had received inadequate digital training, and many of their skills were informal ones geared toward entertainment rather than academic work. Among teachers, the study found a generational divide: younger educators adapted quickly to new applications, while some older colleagues reported anxiety and struggled with basic functions. Yet the regression analyses were striking. Application competence was only a weak positive predictor of mLearning integration, with a standardized coefficient of 0.12 and a p-value of 0.085, and perceived training sufficiency showed no significant relationship at all. Together, training and competence explained a mere 2.4 percent of the variance in how thoroughly mobile learning was integrated into classrooms.

That statistical result cuts against a common assumption, namely that better-trained users automatically integrate technology more deeply. The researchers interpret it as evidence that training has focused on operating devices rather than transforming teaching. Classroom observations confirmed that instruction remained overwhelmingly teacher-centred, with laptop use largely confined to dedicated ICT lessons. Students reported using their laptops more at home than at school because lessons still relied, in one student’s words, on chalk and talk. The study situates this pattern within what the literature calls a digital facade: technology is present, but pedagogy has not changed, so devices serve as expensive substitutes for notes and presentations rather than as tools for the collaborative knowledge construction that social constructivism prizes.

The weakest dimension of all was policy awareness. A remarkable 93.7 percent of students held neutral views about whether mLearning policies even existed, and only 6.7 percent agreed or disagreed that such policies were in place. Teachers and school managers were barely better informed. We were briefed on the laptop initiative, but no policy was shared with us, one teacher reported. A school manager explained that ministry circulars addressed distribution, maintenance, and reporting of laptops, but offered no guidance on how the devices should actually be used in daily instruction. Inferential tests found no significant differences in policy awareness across gender, age, or school, indicating the gap is system-wide rather than localized.

From these findings the researchers built their central contribution: the Strategic mLearning Implementation Framework, or SmLIF. Unlike the Technology Acceptance Model, the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology, or the FRAME model, which each emphasize single slices of the problem, SmLIF layers technological, pedagogical, institutional, and governance dimensions into one iterative design. Its foundation layer covers policy, governance, and infrastructure readiness. An operational layer addresses teacher and student preparation, digital pedagogy, and technical support. A strategic enabler layer institutionalizes monitoring and evaluation, feeding a continuous Plan, Act, Review, Improve cycle that treats implementation as an ongoing process rather than a one-time rollout.

The implications for policymakers are pointed. National digital education programs, the authors conclude, must be accompanied by reliable internet access, adequate physical infrastructure, clear school-level policies, and continuous evaluation systems. Teacher training needs to move beyond basic device skills toward pedagogical methods, collaboration, and differentiated support that meets educators at varying skill levels. Without those complements, the study warns, even the most ambitious laptop programs risk producing symbolic rather than substantive change, leaving devices idle in bags while instruction proceeds exactly as it did before.

The researchers call for follow-up work to validate and refine SmLIF in other educational settings, including longitudinal studies tracking how technology use and teaching practices evolve over time and comparative investigations across countries. They also flag emerging frontiers such as the impact of mobile learning on digital equity and safety, learning analytics, and sustainable digital pedagogies integrated with artificial intelligence. For now, the message from Botswana’s classrooms is clear and increasingly resonant across the developing world: the digital transformation of education begins, but does not end, with a laptop on every desk.

Subject of Research: Mobile learning implementation in Botswana's public senior secondary schools following a national laptop initiative

Article Title: Investigation of mobile learning implementation in Botswana secondary schools for improved academic and digital literacy outcomes

Article References: Mabalane, D. K., & Batane, T. (2026). Investigation of mobile learning implementation in Botswana secondary schools for improved academic and digital literacy outcomes. Discover Education, 5(1), Article 802. https://doi.org/10.1007/s44217-026-02010-x

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s44217-026-02010-x

Keywords: mobile learning, Botswana, digital literacy, secondary education, Technology Acceptance Model, social constructivism, educational technology, laptop initiative, education policy, digital divide, teacher training, Sub-Saharan Africa