WASHINGTON,
DC — Microsoft announced plans Wednesday to bring
internet access via satellite to 10 million people, half of them in
Africa, as
part of efforts to bridge a digital divide with the developing world.
اضافة اعلان
At a summit with African leaders in Washington led
by President Joe Biden, the technology leader said it would start the satellite
project immediately with a priority on bringing internet for the first time to
parts of Egypt, Senegal, and Angola.
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 the partnership with satellite provider Viasat,
Microsoft said it would also provide internet in Guatemala, Mexico and more
remote parts of the US and also step up efforts in Nigeria and the Democratic
Republic of Congo.
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 to 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.
The latest effort is part of Microsoft’s Airband
Initiative, which aims to provide internet access to 250 million people, 100
million of them in Africa, by the end of 2025.
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.
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