Turkmenistan gave away thousands of free Chinese-made laptops to first-grade students who will start school this year, a source in the ministry of education told AFP on Thursday.

A Lenovo notebook is shown at a computer shop in Hong Kong. Turkmenistan gave away thousands of free Chinese-made Lenovo laptops to first-grade students who will start school this year, a source in the ministry of education told AFP on Thursday.
"Around 100,000 first-grade students were given priceless gifts from our honourable president -- computer notebooks for the new school year," the source said.

The ex-Soviet desert nation signed an agreement in June with the Chinese company Lenovo to supply the laptops as part of a Chinese government's grant valued at 50 million yuan (7.8 million dollars, 5.5 million euros).

"Today, our notebooks are given as gifts for the new school year to all first-graders in the country," said Lenovo representative in Turkmenistan Zhen da Sho.

The notebooks are produced especially for first-graders and are equipped with educational software to teach students basic grammar and alphabet, said Ogul Atayeva, an official with the state education institute which developed the teaching method.

Energy-hungry China has been expanding its political and economic influence in the former Soviet Central Asia, including gas-rich Turkmenistan through loans and energy deals.

Ashgabat has already started to sell gas to China through the 8,700-kilometre gas pipeline which started pumping gas in July.

The Internet service in Turkmenistan is largely unreliable and expensive. A monthly bill for unlimited high-speed Internet for a household can reach almost 7,000 dollars. However, many schools and universities are equipped with desktop computers.

Turkmenistan, one of the most opaque and authoritarian states in the world, has been ruled by President Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov since 2007.