Come rain or shine 10-year-old Emmanuel and his mates now spend their days glued to a hut outside the Kiswa community centre, a few miles from the bustling core of the Ugandan capital, Kampala.

They're glued to the screens of Africa's first Hole In The Wall computer-learning station sponsored by the Commonwealth Connects project and which makes internet and educational software freely available to children in the area.

"It's the first time I play with a computer," little Emmanuel explains. "I like it, I like it a lot... I want to use it to know about other countries, to study and to play games."

Together with his mates, who gather on the muddy road where the station stands, he cannot seem to get enough of it. They queue an hour before the place opens at 10 a.m. and spend most of their free time there.

It was unveiled officially last week by the organisation's outgoing Secretary General Don McKinnon and Foreign Affairs Minister Michael Frendo, who chairs the Connects programme.

The area is one of the poorest in Kampala, a city of contrasts which juxtaposes abject poverty with high-rise buildings. In fact, the setting up of the station brought with it the added benefit of electricity, which had previously been missing from the area immediately surrounding it.

Literally miles away from the CHOGM conference centres which often produce little more than non-binding communiqués, this is also what the Commonwealth is about and, in this case, it is directly tangible and traceable to a stand taken in Malta two years ago.

At the Malta CHOGM, the Commonwealth's leaders had made a declaration of intent to break the digital divide.

It is also the sort of initiatives the Maltese government wants to be more of a protagonist in. In the speech the Prime Minister made at the opening ceremony of this weekend's summit, Dr Gonzi pledged Malta's commitment to set up a steering committee that would work on fighting poverty with technology.

The Hole In The Wall project so far will include the station in Kiswa and another three centres located in some of the most deprived areas in Uganda's west, east and north regions but the idea is to expand the programme to the whole country following an analysis of a pilot phase.

While it may not be much, Ambrose Ruyooka, an official of the Ministry of ICT in Uganda, says, it's a good start. "As you can see for yourself most of these kids have hardly ever come across a computer. This station will help demystify technology, which is the biggest barrier in the digital divide."