As part of its attempts to close the digital divide with the developing world, Microsoft revealed plans on Wednesday 13th December 2022 to provide internet connection through satellite to 10 million individuals, half of whom will reside in Africa. The technology company announced that it would launch the satellite project right away with a priority on giving internet access for the first time to sections of Egypt, Senegal, and Angola at a summit with African leaders in Washington, DC, hosted by President Joe Biden.
Microsoft president Brad Smith said that the company has been impressed by its engineers in Nairobi and Lagos. In Africa, “there is no shortage of talent, but there is a huge shortage of opportunity,” Smith told AFP.
In its cooperation with satellite service provider Viasat, Microsoft said that it would expand its operations in Nigeria and the Democratic Republic of the Congo in addition to offering internet access in more rural areas of the United States, Guatemala, and Mexico.
Smith said the biggest holdup to internet access has been the lack of electricity, which is not reliable for around half of Africans.
“For people who don’t go there or don’t spend time thinking about Africa, it’s hard for them to even imagine that because electricity in my view is the greatest invention of the 19th century,”
Smith said.
“When you think about broadband, you cannot have access to the internet at any speed without access to electricity,” he said. He said Microsoft was focused on finding low-cost solutions in areas where both the internet and electricity are absent. Smith said he saw wide support in Africa for bringing internet access, saying many governments have leapfrogged over their Western counterparts in ease of regulation as the continent did not have the same “extraordinary web of licensing regimes” in place from the past.
Ministries are often led by Africans with industry experience, “so they know how business works and they know how government works,” Smith said. “Even in countries where we may find more authoritarian challenges, I think it’s more likely that governments are going to want to control what’s available on the internet rather than its availability,” he said.
Despite rapid strides in the internet in developed nations and some major emerging economies, 2.9 billion people, or more than one-third of the world, have never gone online, according to the UN’s International Telecommunication Union.
Source: AFP
