Laptops provide people the means to educate themselves and communicate with each other in new ways.
Education and communication are among the best tools available to address problems such as fighting government corruption and clarifying land-ownership rights.
Come on, the laptops are not being given people for whom access to food, water, and protection from the elements is a problem. The point is to provide the educated working poor in 2nd/3rd world countries access to tools so that they can improve their lives.
And for these people, access to education and communication is very, very important. To take one example: farmers in rural India have a very hard time getting a fair price for their crops because they can't access price information before harvest, they basically have to just hop on a bus to the nearest big village and take whatever price is offered by the middleman that day. Poor communication leads to an inefficient economy.
If you don't think that laptops are the most efficient way to help these people out, what are you proposing instead?
Sure. But once you can survive for the next couple of days - getting market prices without actually physically walking to market town - gets suprisingly useful.
OK, this is more of an explanation for the success of cell phones than laptops.
Education and communication are among the best tools available to address problems such as fighting government corruption and clarifying land-ownership rights.