Day: March 5, 2023

Only a third of people in the world’s poorest countries can connect to the internet, the U.N. telecoms agency said Sunday, but low-flying satellites could bring hope to millions, especially in remote corners of Africa.

Tech giants including Microsoft have pledged to help populations hobbled by poor internet services to “leapfrog” into an era of online connectivity, with satellites set to play a key role as rival firms send thousands of new generation transmitters into low level orbit.

At the moment just 36% of the 1.25 billion people in the world’s 46 poorest countries can plug into the internet, the International Telecommunication Union said. By comparison, more than 90 percent have access in the European Union.

The ITU condemned the “staggering international connectivity gap” that it said had widened over the past decade.

The divide has been a key complaint at a U.N. summit of Least Developed Countries in Doha, where UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told their leaders that “you are being left behind in the digital revolution.”

The digital dearth is particularly acute in some African countries, including the Democratic Republic of Congo, where barely a quarter of the population of nearly 100 million can connect.

While internet access is easy in major DRC cities such as Kinshasa, huge rural zones and swathes of territory battled over by rival rebel groups for more than two decades are digital deserts.

The launch of thousands of Low-Earth Orbit satellites could bring speedy change and boost African hopes, tech experts promised at the Doha summit.

‘Leapfrog other nations’

Satellite coverage will play a key role in Microsoft’s vow to bring internet access to 100 million Africans by 2025, which was outlined ahead of the summit.

Microsoft announced a first phase for five million Africans in December and last week added a commitment to cover another 20 million people.

The initial five million will be served by Viasat, one of the companies sending constellations of satellites into space to compete with land-based fibre broadband.

Elon Musk’s Space X and Starlink are also putting thousands of satellites into an orbit between 400 and 700 kilometers (250 to 430 miles) above Earth.

Microsoft president Brad Smith told AFP that when he first saw the 20 million figure proposed by his team last year, he asked “is this real?”, but that he was now convinced it is possible.

“The technology costs have come down substantially and will continue to drop,” he said. “That is part of what makes it possible to move this fast to reach this size of population.

“Countries in Africa have the opportunity to leapfrog other nations when it comes to the regulatory structure for something like wireless communications,” he added.

“We can reach many more people than we could with fixed line technologies five or 10 or 15 years ago.”

Bandwidth bonanza

Richer countries have already largely allocated the available bandwidth for telecoms and television.

“In Africa the spectrum isn’t being used and so it is available and the governments are moving faster to bring this connectivity to more people,” Smith said.

Microsoft is working with Africa telecoms specialist Liquid Intelligent Technologies to provide internet for the second segment of 20 million people.

Providing internet and digital skills training for thousands of Africans was part of an effort to provide a private-sector alternative to “foreign aid”, Smith said, declaring that “we are bullish on what we believe digital technology can do for development.”

But the Microsoft president acknowledged that the private sector is “woefully under-developed and under-invested” in many LDC economies.

Liquid Intelligent says it has 100,000 kilometers (62,000 miles) of land fibre across Africa but is building a major satellite footprint.

“In hard-to-reach areas,” said Nic Rudnick, its deputy chief executive, “satellite is often the only technology or the most reliable technology for fast broadband that always works.”

Source: Voice of America

Leaders from the world’s poorest nations poured out their disappointment and bitterness at a UN summit on Sunday over the treatment of their countries by richer counterparts.

Many made pointed calls for the developed powers to come good with billions of dollars of promised aid to help them escape poverty and battle climate change.

Central African Republic’s president told the U.N. Least Developed Countries meeting in Doha that his resource-rich but impoverished nation was being “looted” by “Western powers.”

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres followed up an attack he made a day earlier on the “predatory” interest rates imposed by international banks on poor states.

He said there could be “no more excuses” for not providing aid.

But the opening day of general debate at the once-in-a-decade summit saw no major announcement of desperately needed cash — apart from $60 million that host Qatar said it would give to United Nations programs.

Leaders of the world’s major economies have been markedly absent from debate, which will last five days, on the turmoil in poor nations.

At a meeting with LDC leaders on Saturday Guterres called for $500 billion to be mobilized for social and economic transformation.

Leaders also used the first day of public debate to renew demands that industrialized governments hand over a promised $100 billion a year to support their efforts to counter global warming.

Presidents and prime ministers from Africa and the Asia-Pacific region made calls for financial action.

Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, whose country of 170 million is scheduled to graduate out of LDC status, said poorer nations “deserve” certainty over financing for development and climate.

“The international community must renew its commitment for real structural transformation in LDCs,” Hasina said.

“Our nations do not ask for charity. What we seek are our due international commitments.”

‘Epic battle’

Zambia’s President Hakainde Hichilema said providing the finance was “a matter of credibility”.

“LDCs cannot afford another lost decade,” declared Narayan Kaji Shrestha, deputy prime minister of Nepal, which is also to leave the LDC club for the Middle Income Countries division by 2026.

Shrestha said that in the five decades since LDC status was established to give countries trade privileges and cheaper finance, they had been “fighting an epic battle against poverty, hunger, disease and illiteracy.”

He highlighted that only six countries had so far escaped the LDC status that some nations consider a stigma.

Central African Republic’s President Faustin-Archange Touadera used his speech to lash out at sanctions imposed by the UN Security Council and other institutions against the huge but sparsely populated nation that has seen decades of instability.

Touadera said the country’s 5.5 million people could not understand how, with vast reserves of gold, diamonds, cobalt, oil and uranium, it “remains, more than 60 years after independence, one of the poorest in the world”.

“Central African Republic has always been wrongly considered by certain Western powers as a reserve for strategic materials,” he added.

“It has suffered a systematic looting since its independence, helped by political instability supported by certain Western powers or their allies.”

The country has been under a UN arms embargo for a decade, while the EU imposed sanctions against the Russian mercenary group Wagner over its activities in Central African Republic and other neighboring countries.

One sanctioned Wagner official was a “security adviser” to Touadera, according to the EU.

Gold and diamond companies linked to Wagner in Central African Republic and Sudan were also hit by EU sanctions.

The LDC summit lasts until March 9 while hundreds of business executives are attending a parallel private sector forum.

Source: Voice of America