US senator Paul Rand comments on Kenyan Farmers (Photo/fox news)
A US senator has claimed that their government uses $100k(approximately sh.10.3m) to teach Kenyan farmers how to use Facebook.
Kentucky representative Paul Rand said through a tweet, "It may not seem like a lot of money, but we spent just under $100k to make sure Kenyan farmers knew how to use Facebook."
In a report tabled in the house, the senator said that the money is used to train Kenyans who suffer from "device illiteracy."
At least, this was the premise behind the Simu Shape Up: Edutainment to Shape Up Cell Phone use Among African Rural Farmers program," the report read.
He also reads that the project is being aired on a local television show in order to share the benefits of mobile programming for agriculture."The project produced segments to air on the Shamba Shape Up television show," he said.
The tweed has elicited outrageous reactions from Kenyans.
Head of Jubilee party Secretariat Raphael Tuju has said that the tweet paints Kenya in bad light a digitally illiterate country
@ Isai_ah_ posted "the government of Kenya applied for grants from the government of united states to teach farmers how to use Facebook. You never knew about it but senator Paul Rand made it public. Instead of telling him to apologise ask Uhuru and @BobGodec to tell us who benefits"
Captain Machuka said; “So you want to tell us; That our farmers are illiterate and we depend on you to learn the stupid Facebook? Our 1yr kid knows how to browse. What’s this.”
Japheth Odonya wrote; “ Hehehe they should clearly ask their government, we didn’t see this, our farmers don’t need this, if seriously we needed 10M kshs we would do a harambee on twitter or just ask Ruto. These Americans like to joke about Kenya, can they come for their money and keep quiet.”