The following are the outputs of the captioning taken during an IGF intervention. Although it is largely accurate, in some cases it may be incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It is posted as an aid, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.
***
>> MODERATOR: ( Speaking off microphone )
It will be a transcription.
Yo!
Yeah, come on, Africa, come on.
( Speaking off microphone )
I didn't realize every single word I've been saying has been going to Zoom. Hello, Zoom participants. Give us a few seconds here.
>> One, two, three.
( Speaking off microphone )
>> I would like everyone online to know these chairs are very uncomfortable. I realized my voice has been live the whole time and I have to be okay with it. I've been cussing, everything.
I want confirmation my collaborators have joined. Is there any way to put the Zoom people up on the screen?
>> I am here. Can you hear me?
>> Hello, can you hear me?
>> Conor Colwell. They should both have speaker rights?
I can hear myself. Is your radio turned to 3?
Can everybody hear me?
Everybody else can hear me?
Yo, yo, yo, yo.
I said, hip, hop, hippie to the hip...
No?
There's too many things dangling from me right now, absolutely not.
My 'tism is triggered.
I would like to be able to see Raashi and Conor.
You will need to turn up your volume, because we could barely hear you.
While we wait for our two collaborators online, Raashi Saxena, she unfortunately got Dengue Fever and was unable to fly from Bangalore.
And Conor Colwell. Things we will get into, so I don't want to get into it now.
This is our presentation.
I need to be able to see a little bit, if that's all right.
"Last Mile Internet: Brazil's G20 Path for Remote Communities"
This is something that is very important to us. This is something that comes to us from our backgrounds. I come from East Africa, originally, from a region that's been shut down from the internet many times, due to either natural disasters or extenuating circumstances. I think our longest shutdown was about two years. My friend here, Okiki, I will let him introduce himself.
>> OKIKI FAMUTIMI: I've been working with Jarrel on this project for a little over a year, I would say. My connection to this, I'm from a country in West Africa in Nigeria, despite the fact it's one of the larger oil-producing countries, the grid in major cities goes down several times a year, to the point it's seen as trivial. That's my personal connection. I really want to basically work on that connection and the relationship between internet and energy access.
>> MODERATOR JAMES: Joined to the left is Duaa, head of the Saudi South. I believe Saudi born and raised. You have come to the IGF on the projected futures that could be made from the youth community here in Saudi Arabia and seeing where your technological development leads you, correct?
>> DUAA BALAWI: Yeah, absolutely. I think a little about me, I'm from a very small village here in the Kingdom. Although I didn't spend much time here, I was born and raised here in Riyadh. It was prevalent to me my family in the village struggled with connectivity and access to internet, despite the fact we have one of the fastest 5G networks in the world and accessibility to the network, there are still rural areas that unfortunately hasn't had the access, hence why I advocated for digital inclusivity at the Y20. There were a lot of topics we were discussing and a lot of policies we wanted to bring to the table. Of course, a forum as big as the G20, nine visiting countries this year in Brazil, there was a lot of things we couldn't necessarily reach a common ground but the one thing we seemed to agree on quite passionately is the imperative everyone needs digital access. Especially with when it is linked to education and the ability to connect with the rest of the world.
To allow people to bridge that divide between marginalized communities. I'm here to speak about that and maybe highlight.
>> MODERATOR JAMES: These are the other two folks, Conor Colwell. Raashi Saxena, I mentioned earlier. I don't know if she is live, but if she can introduce herself, go ahead, Raashi or Conor, you will come through on everybody's headphones. It's a very interesting experience here. Raashi, are you available?
You are muted, if you are available.
Can we unmute Raashi and Conor?
Conor Colwell as well.
Hey, there's Raashi's smiling face, what's up?
>> MODERATOR SAXENA: Hi, how are you? Hope you are doing well. Thank you so much for joining in.
>> MODERATOR JAMES: I think you will want to talk a little louder, if that's okay.
I'm a bit disappointed not being there in person but happy to have the session.
>> MODERATOR JAMES: You might want to try the headphones. We are hearing your phones, we aren't hearing your content.
>> RAASHI SAXENA: Can you hear me now?
>> MODERATOR JAMES: We are getting mixed reviews. Just yell.
>> RAASHI SAXENA: Okay, I will try to be louder, can you hear me now?
>> MODERATOR JAMES: Yes.
>> RAASHI SAXENA: Fabulous. My name is Raashi, I work with Jarrel and Keeks. I'm a technology engineer and I've been working on digital, internet governance issues twins 2018. I made my debut in the IGF in 2018 in Paris working on internet government shut downs. A Steering Committee member at IRPC. I'm excited to be here.
>> MODERATOR JAMES: Raashi, I will summarize what you just said. If you wouldn't mind could you go to settings that your input level is turned all the way up. Raashi is saying she is an avid member of the IGF community, she has worked on all sorts of commissions and policy initiatives by a number of different nation states and has worked extensively with the Bangalore community around technical innovation and fostering camaraderie.
She is being modest, but the World Bank or IMF, one of the two, the guys with the money. We have Conor Colwell, I think also capable of unmuting himself. Conor, are you there?
>> CONOR COLWELL: I'm here, can you hear me all right?
>> MODERATOR JAMES: I think there's something about our remote appearance not coming through at the appropriate volume level. While they get that figured out, hopefully they will. Let me do an overview about you, and when you have your first question, feel free to jump back in.
>> CONOR COLWELL: Sounds good.
>> MODERATOR JAMES: He came through a little louder there, didn't he? We will do a test in a second.
Conor is avid builder, a guy who likes to get his hands dirty. Spending the last couple years in Indonesia, Djibouti and Indonesia, their way point pilots designed to basically be able to drop mobile agile grid into any region in the world. Whether that be a very remote desert or very high elevation somewhere.
I will go on to the next thing. Conor, I hope I did you justice on that?
>> CONOR COLWELL: Yeah, thanks, that's great.
>> MODERATOR JAMES: We heard you pretty decently there.
>> RAASHI SAXENA: I'm wondering if you can hear me decently as well? I tried to.
>> MODERATOR JAMES: I think we are hearing you a little better.
If you can shut that door out there, I think that would be really helpful for everybody.
If you can minimize that chat side, that would be awesome. What is the last mile? It's hard to put ourselves in that experience, especially if we come from regions not considered the last mile. Let's give an example.
What would you do if you ordered an Uber to Disneyland and it dropped you off ten miles away.
Los Angeles, Disneyland, the real one, period. It's not the end of the world if you don't make it but your community will have a drastic mental health change if you don't make it to Disneyland. What would you do?
I'm sure people will be like get a different Uber, a train, get you where you need to go. Interestingly enough, there's parallels between what it is like. You know everybody is hyper connected and getting mass amounts of money connected to the internet. You know opportunities are happening for other people, so you are in a position, how do I get me and my community to the last five miles. It has made it all the way here, we can see the promise land in the distance.
This is difficult. Hey, can you go back? Never mind.
Can you go back to the beginning?
If you go to U.N. you will hear things like Sustainable Development Goals. It’s not well talked about, the definitions of meaningful connectivity. Who has it? We talk about the Global North. The framework focuses on four pillars like 4G. Smartphone ownership, daily use, unlimited access. Casual existence for communities in the north, if not all of them.
Dependencies, energy infrastructure, regulators, motivated partners, amazing how important that one is. And expensive equipment.
When we look at development goals of everyone having meaningful connectivity by 2030 we acknowledge everyone has to have these dependencies taken care of. Can every region have those taken care of? Not necessarily and not by their own standards often times.
What do these dependencies look like for the last mile and solutions and developments being made by us and by others.
Let me see, I have other notes here.
Raashi, would you like to speak at all in this. I know you are involved in the U.N. Quite a bit. If you, Raashi or Conor have anything to say, jump in. I'm look at my notes here.
Okay, so this next bit will be a bit of a re-programming. With like any re-programmings there may be a lot of questions that come up. I encourage you to get up in the moment and ask them, or submit in writing and hand them to my boy, “Keeks”, here.
Deep dive, centralized grids are often brittle. Energy infrastructure are easily destroyed through natural disasters or whatever extenuating circumstances. Sponsor nations for expensive grid infrastructure are limited, often not designed with input from the average people.
You don't have input from people's lives. I see head nodding. Or the whole grid starts off at the mercy of outside corporations and lackluster capitalism, I say that because I enjoy making up terms. But there's not enough incentives with the grid users these are affecting. With that you often don't have sovereignty and many are looking for sovereignty over their own connections, or future connections the GMCA may be putting out.
No ability for utility companies or solutions to be developed or owned by those who rely on them often times. And ownership of utilities ensures standards improve.
Standards would be improving because their shared goals, shared outcomes. Much like the Uber driver, if this thing goes forward, we will see that there needs to be, yeah...
There needs to be physical conditions that enable people to foster shared outcomes.
That Uber driver said I don't have the same shared outcome as you. In fact, I will drop you off from Disneyland five miles away. My wife wants me home, the dishes aren't done, I need to go.
If you were driving that car, and driving your family to Disneyland, you would all have the same shared outcome and you would get there together.
Recognizing these deeper challenges is why, coming together, Conor, Raashi, Duaa and others, people who focus on a strategic collective. Seen by billions of people by the world. And start to address these bottlenecks we see happening. When you see bottlenecks purely because of lacking infrastructure and lacking partner countries, lacking investments and honestly lacking technical expertise to create the sovereignty for themselves.
So, oh my God.
Leapfrogging. Anyone want to summarize what you think leapfrogging is. I will bring this one to you.
>> It's to make a leap.
>> MODERATOR JAMES: Hand to the man behind you.
>> Well, I believe leapfrogging would be to take a step forward and jumping above some of the obstacles that you might find, so you are jumping above whatever difficulties you are having.
>> MODERATOR JAMES: Yes. That is a good overview. Kind of generality. I think it would be awesome to hear Raashi or Conor?
Do you guys have any thoughts on what leapfrogging is?
>> RAASHI SAXENA: Can you hear me?
>> MODERATOR JAMES: Yes, just yell a bit.
>> RAASHI SAXENA: I'm always yelling.
I actually kind of agree with what Purnima was saying in the chat.
We have nine chats. I would say leapfrogging, places historically under connected and underserved by traditional telecom operators and in our case also energy operators.
They don't necessarily have to be in regions that are impoverished, they can be in first world countries, but just not well-connected. And also a lot of usual private stakeholders might also not be incentivized because of the limited population or challenges with terrain, things like that.
It's a long-winded answer.
>> MODERATOR JAMES: I think that's a great answer.
And Purnima. Appreciate that answer.
>> RAASHI SAXENA: We have Purnima joining as committee member on the coalition on rights and principles.
>> MODERATOR JAMES: Thank you so much for joining. Happy to have you.
I think we have a quick video that helps us tell you what we think leapfrogging is, hopefully this doesn't blow out your ears to be honest. I will walk out of the way.
>> I mean you're from Nigeria, what do you consider leapfrogging to be. How would you define what it means for awe region to leapfrog and what does that actually look like in practice compared to the west?
>> Great question. Leapfrogging basically when country skips stages of economic development. When you think about how the U.S. had telegrams, telephones and cell phones. You got to see like steps. But countries like Nigeria, you didn't really have widespread land lines and telephone lines before everyone in the country had a cell phone.
I look at that as leapfrogging. Skipping steps. But I'm preaching to the choir. What do you think terms of quantifying, what are some hard numbers for leapfrogging?
>> I don't know, see for me, base factors of a society or people that defines leapfrogging, same as kilowatt per hour per person, megabits per person in relation to GDP per capita. You have access to more internet activity on a regular basis and that internet activity is getting faster, if you look at any developed nation they have the highest kilowatt per person, compared to developing that's what they are talking about developing, that's it. It's leapfrogging and it's emergent property displayed by China, India and others and fucking Thailand, this is saying things the west may have introduced, the west may have bastardized and we sold them. Saying that's not going to work for us, we will take these parts, see you in 50 years. And this is like an endeavor made by many Global South countries that we call leapfrog regions. And this endeavor is paid earnestly, most of the time, but it's pretty easy to fucking stop, man, pretty easy to stop with foreign investment. You have removed those people from what it means to be in modern society. Modern societies develop and they thrive, flourish upon the most efficient consumption of energy across-the-board, and how that energy affects just the general GDP and economic growth year over year. Take out the energy grid, you take out GDP growth, period.
>> Peace.
>> MODERATOR JAMES: That's my boy. So let's just take a pause here.
What we are framing and kind of acknowledging, there's plenty of examples of leapfrogging. We have seen whole countries like Singapore and whole others dig down deep and completely restructure their entire society around advancement and focusing everybody's attention on advancement.
I would like to ask the audience and our own panelists and Keeks, are there any examples in your country and leapfrogging and areas changing overnight, maybe hydro electric dam, I would love to give a little bit of a moment, this is a long workshop. We have to do a little bit of participation.
I know you are Italian, where are you from?
Brazil. Please. Let us know.
Do you have any?
I met him in the Italian airport, that's why I thought he was Italian, by the way. We met days ago, heard him talking about lower radium modules. Glad to see you showed up, this is how friendships start.
I know examples how Brazil has leapfrogged or is leapfrogging. Do you have any examples of your own? You don't know. What is the main transportation tool in Brazil?
Roads that are used, that have what on them? The large scale vehicles that are called, buses.
The main tool of transportation in Brazil is a bus.
It's what moves the majority of the population from place to place which also makes your transportation quite slow. The interesting thing about Brazil is originally, there was a huge plan in focus from a sovereign and national level on doing a train system. There was outside influence that had certain lobbies around developing cars, that pushed for the Italian population to make cars the main concept of transportation. They almost leapfrogged. They decided to take it easy.
Can I ask where everyone is from?
>> If everyone is from Saudi Arabia, that would be very surprising. Where are you from? Brazil as well. Yes, I'm loving this.
Oh man, we have lots of Brazilians in here. Do you have any examples of Brazil leapfrogging?
>> Nope. I'm just thinking about, I can't remember a case. Give me some minutes and I will think more.
>> MODERATOR JAMES: Okay.
>> I would like to call on my colleague there in the back. If we could hand over the mic to him. My colleague Ahmed works in the energy sector, and I think he could speak on leapfrogging in the Kingdom, particularly the energy sector and renewables.
>> Thank you, just to give context for the question, leapfrogging, Sustainable Development or in general?
>> MODERATOR JAMES: General.
>> Yeah, so in terms of energy, we are looking for alternative energy sources and how we can really translate electricity, which can be abundant in Saudi in terms of solar and wind. Can that be translated into long-term storage?
It could be short-term storage in terms of batteries is something that’s already growing, but the medium and long-term storage of chemicals is something we are seeing developments. How we take ammonia as energy carrier and transport it internationally.
There’s been issues with ammonia utilization. How can you turn it back and crack it into hydrogen, which is what you want to get from it? You get some difficulties with the efficiency, but how can you use ammonia itself as a fuel. There's been a lot of development and leapfrogging, in that sense.
E-fuels, sustainable fuels, aviation fuels, there’s been a lot of work on developing these fuels that can be used within the existing infrastructure and that could really support the transition. That's where I think major efforts we see happening in Saudi.
>> MODERATOR JAMES: Shut the door, please. That was very, very helpful. Actually a perspective I hadn't heard at all.
Duaa, do you want to speak on that? Seems like you knew where you wanted to go with this.
>> DUAA BALAWI: I don't necessarily have a take, I'm not a subject matter expert by any shape or form. I want to say, at least in the past five years it's been one of the most inspirational development stories for me to see the strides Saudi has made in the renewable energy sector. Commissioner our existing infrastructure could be leveraged but there's a push for building new infrastructure, harboring international investments to not only provide energy in the kingdom but expanding the national grid and support developing nations in that transition as well.
>> MODERATOR JAMES: That makes so many things go off in my mind. I had no idea you were pushing into chemical battery storage. There's innovations to be made there. Huge innovations to be made there. What I'm hearing, it sounds like Saudi Arabia is aware of, brought the standard of living up. Like everyone is doing well, right? We are all loving. For places around the world leapfrogging and creating new grids for themselves it's a matter of keeping that momentum going. You can't keep the momentum going, you basically have to accept there's a whole population percentage of your community going back to the way things were. I don't know how many of you have children or dealt with people who don't want to lose access to things. Once you see the promise land you aren't going to be told to sit in purgatory, that's essentially how it is, right? It's to maintain the standard of living. When you have a shared goal you make sure the whole family gets to Disneyland.
If we get 20% the people to Disneyland, 20% will have a great time, that's all that matters.
Nations, being our neighbors look what Saudi is doing, sounds like going toward solar is its plan leapfrogging it's own internet. Do the panelists have any thoughts or questions for Akhmad. I could show you his credentials really quick, it might help everybody. We will skip this part for a second. Don't read it.
There we go.
Sir?
This controller hates me, I'm going to be honest. Everyone stop looking ahead, all right? There we go, this should be it.
Can you hit play?
>> In 2018, we saw a problem, nearly 1 billion lacked access to power, water internet. Traditional mini grids only addressed one need, requiring expensive wires and only serving people nearby, struggling to make money because they only selling electricity. We got to work developing a new technology, way points. Using AI to efficiently distribute electricity across multiple revenue-generating services. They don't just provide electricity.
It changed Renting batteries, selling clean water via atmospheric water generation, Starlink, hosting AI training and computing services, storing data, no electrons are wasted. They use to power fans, to power lights, to power commerce, and to power the party.
Way points also use that electricity to deliver more electricity, up to 15 kilometers away from where they are located, with electric bikes, increasing the range of electricity access. Enabling people to charge phones? We might be far away. Globally for the first time, can access the hardware to run and fine tune A.I. models.
>> MODERATOR JAMES: Okay, I will just pause this there.
Maybe this is helpful to go back.
Conor, I will let you give color to that. There's a ton to be done with solar, how does a community leapfrog if they have sovereignty over their electric grid and connectivity and the steps that make it a efficient population inside of a nation state, then these types of solutions, what we are talking with the way points is dropping this into a region and allowing those communities to run the way point. We have been going into universities, talking to Ph.D. students, electrical engineering and telecom. Hi, how would you like to man and operate this thing? We will do training. There's a lot to be said about connecting communities many kilometers away from each other through communities like this.
>> CONOR COLWELL: Can you hear me?
>> MODERATOR JAMES: Yeah, just talk a little bit louder.
>> CONOR COLWELL: Thank you. There's definitely a lot to talk about regarding that. I suppose one interesting angle, just to follow-up from the previous thing, when I think of leapfrogging, the example that comes to mind immediately, I suppose how China just skipped the whole desktop computer and went to laptops, tablets and mobile devices. From a technological perspective is having. Just to comment, it's like Saudi skipping ahead to renewable energy. What I'm seeing is it often involves a infrastructure layer that probably was the best thing in the world when it got installed but since then technology has moved forward, or the existing incumbent was expensive or resource-intensive, that's what it is prevented it from entering communities or ecosystems globally or slowed it down, but when a new technology comes along they are able to skip to that. Partly because the infrastructure from incumbents isn't there. Usually, there's more slow down if the infrastructure is already there. In certain areas where there's no infrastructure, that makes it to put in new technology and skip ahead. I can talk about that for a while. Thanks,
>> MODERATOR JAMES: No problem. I want to give you a chance. Can anybody tell me what the average megabits per second at your fast where you live? How fast is your internet?
>> I want to say 130.
>> MODERATOR JAMES: Nice.
Anyone topping 130?
Are we topping 130?
>> DUAA BALAWI: Fiber is pretty nice.
>> MODERATOR JAMES: I would be curious, Brazil, what is your megabits per second average? 100?
You both live in cities, correct?
Do you know the megabits per second average. I do know it.
>> Like 2-3.
>> It's 2-10. Saudi Arabia is making strides towards connecting those to rural communities, I think 98.6% density, 5 megabits per second, trying to move it to 10 megabits per second.
In Brazil is quite -- you are ranging between 5-20 megabits per second and the outer areas, the rural communities, actually it's really, really cool. There's a few people who have Starlinks.
The value proposition of a Starlink is making a lot of sense. But not in the way many of us will think. I will pause there because I will go into that in a second. We are seeing connects between satellite and Starlink. In Nigeria, what is the kilowatt per second.
>> Kilowatt hour per capita is definitely below 1,000. It's an oil-producing country, but for some reason the electricity is so unreliable, people are using it all the place. I averaged maybe 5 megabits per second on a good day. In a town that didn't have a ton of people in it. Like people are walking around with multiple phones because you could have your service in your house. Got to pull out the second because the cell phone provider doesn't have coverage
>> MODERATOR JAMES: Any other countries that aren't Brazil or Saudi Arabia, or Lagos or Nigeria? Anyone?
You are Brazilian as well? I'm glad all the Brazilians showed up. Nice.
Feel free to join if one of you wants to join up here.
You are a cybersecurity expert. We can make something work.
But I think, when I think of megabits per second in rural communities, how many know what a community network is? The concept of a community network? You do? Nice. Do you want to define it, or do you want me to define it and just tell people that you said that?
My friend said it's often times one, two, three four, gateways which are the access points to the greater internet. And these gateways can be like Starlinks, they could be fiber internet.
But you’re taking these gateways and then you are spreading that signal across many devices and many unique users. And those unique users, while all using the same bandwidth are being optimized with a protocol that says you have this much bandwidth coming from this person or this person and this person.
We have three gateways, so let’s call them three Starlinks.
How can we optimize to make sure that guy is loading his video, those people are texting their family, and that person’s FaceTiming their mom?
So that’s where a community network and community network algorithms really come into play. Oftentimes, if you put the infrastructure in place to make a self-sustaining community network the speed and connection is better because of the way protocol sharing goes and the way that package data can be transported across a network.
So Raashi, stop me if there's any good stuff coming in the chat. I was going to give you a moment to talk about community networks and anything you’ve seen in your experiences.
I know you’ve been traveling all over Africa right now and have experience inside India. Wanted to know if you have anything to say or anyone in the chat?
>> RAASHI SAXENA: Purnima actually responded. But one example I like is the community network that is very close to where I stay. Bangalore, 80 or 90 kilometers away, a network owned and governed by women. She has done a good job ensuring there's education around how to use the internet. How to build a better internet and something more self-reliance, there's a lot of work to do in India and interesting community networking. A lot of the communities talk to each other, there's one in Brazil, Argentina. It's a self-reliant way people can get livelihood opportunities and ensuring I, coming from a country which has the largest number of intentional shut downs in the world, for your social-emotional well-being, also coming from a -- we have communities running on WhatsApp.
India in general, with a lot of the public services and a lot of the amenities has intentionally gone digital.
So yeah, the internet remains our fourth life line where people talk about the basic needs. And yeah, I would definitely say having access to meaningful connectivity remains a priority.
>> MODERATOR JAMES: I want to tap into something you just said, I think it speaks to something that was said, you were talking about community network designers and folks who have advocated in their regions are talking to each other and learning from each other and building better, more robust. They had no knowledge of what was being done there. But since then they are interested in compiling, they are now being maze aware. That's something really unique and connectivity infrastructure is the ability to learn from others in a non-competitive way. When you have multi-national corporations and like leveraged outside parties it's not really an attitude of collaboration with other multi-national corporations, there's a reason Keeks is mentioning why people have cell phones, it's the reality of their telecoms.
When we talk about -- hello. Whenever you want.
All right. Examples of leapfrogging, the last two decades. I know you all, how you think how China leapfrogged or India or Brazil or Singapore.
Tell everyone your name when you do. I think we have a microphone in her hands for you?
I'll get it.
>> Hello, my name is (?), I'm from the Brazilian Association of Small Internet Service Providers. I think the small ISP's in Brazil are a good example of leapfrogging, especially small and rural areas where most of the small companies took Brazil straight to fiber access. I was asking when you asked for the fiber speeds, I was checking official data, over 40 megabits per second, but rural we are most likely around 30 megabits. This is a good example how we do sort of sovereignty because it's 20,000 small companies doing this most on fixed broadband networks.
It's also a good idea how we have aligned economic interests with connectivity. Because we have, we are aligned to Uber drivers with the families, let's say. Because you have small companies that started from their communities, from their small cities and they grew into larger networks. They have incentives to work together as small ISP's work together to build better networks and I think it's a good example as well.
>> MODERATOR JAMES: Yes, entirely true. I want to tap into what you were saying and bring it back to the Starlink stuff I was saying earlier, our collaborators in Brazil, people we have worked together, they informed us, we started doing this survey, hey, how does your country evolve its culture around internet access, bandwidth throttling. We hear from people who live in countries who get throttled. How they do household chores depends how long it takes to load. In Brazil it's really interesting, Starlink has offered a very unique value-proposition where in often times in villages between 15,000, there's often a generator on from 5:00 p.m. to 11:00 or 12. But that generator is running a Starlink. So these communities, when -- it's actually one guy who bought a Starlink package. One guy, he bought and they are sitting around upgrading off honor system, we will give you 10 or 20 cents per hour. It's a cash or digital cash honor system. Because one man, or woman could afford a Starlink. The cultural evolution of the community is we are a community network of people already before the internet got here. We will all be a part of this. There's a lot of interesting opportunities, instead of going at it from a classically western perspective, every house will have a Starlink, your fourth other house has to have a Starlink. I live here, my people live here, I'm here, I just need this meaningful connectivity standard with the folks we were talking to in Brazil. I feel you can validate this, WhatsApp. We were talking to people, you are watching the Starlink to watch Netflix, no, we are just WhatsApp’ing people, we are sending voice memos like candy.
We can talk about the use of cultures and the way they evolve around connectivity as a form of leapfrogging because once again you are able to redefine the programme expectations. You aren't trying to be the United States or Britain or something like this. Are trying to be Brazil and you are just trying to go online. For example, does anybody have examples how Singapore leapfrogged?
They decided they were going to be a technology financial tech power house.
One leverage point, one aspect. Instead of saying oh we are going to try to create these different sectors, we don't have the land, we have multi-national partners and strategic leverage to push into a technology center next to Hong Kong. That was a big move for them, what you see Taiwan doing, they burrow down deep on semiconductors and modules. We are talking about energy and leapfrogging, but it's also saying we will focus on this for 50 years and see everybody else later.
I want to give a chance, Rash, can you go to the Zoom?
Keep me honest on this chat.
I feel Purnima has a few chats.
>> RAASHI SAXENA: She will be able to tell you where she is in India.
>> MODERATOR JAMES: Delhi, nice. Another urban center, another urban core. I would like to, don't make me do this.
Now I want to try to pivot to the kind of outside multi-national stakeholder corporate influence that could come into how a country can leapfrog. There's positive and sometimes negative examples. Would you mind going back to the presentation?
Third parties and leapfrogging. Positive examples.
I think there's a lot to be said about drawing contracts like NAFTA. Mexico by being a part of NAFTA was able to bring in neighbors and develop its own city grids and infrastructure around connectivity and energy. They had better access to deals and taxes and all these sorts of things. I think another positive example would be South Korea. Out of a defense position to some extent, they had outside stick holder United States, the financial companies say do you want these companies, let's try to make that happen. You see real sovereign development of the sectors because they made strategic deals with outside parties, multi-national stakeholders. You could see negative examples like Brazil, you should have tons of trains, you don't because of buses. Commissioner because they were interested in selling you their Petrol and cars. What country do you live in?
>> Brasilia.
>> MODERATOR JAMES: Nice. What's the nearest city to you?
>> (Off microphone)
>> MODERATOR JAMES: How far is that by car? From Brazil?
>> I guess, 500 kilometers, something like that.
>> MODERATOR JAMES: Driving a car, it's about 3-5 hours?
>> I guess. Like two and a half hours.
>> MODERATOR JAMES: When you take a bus, how many hours?
>> 16.
>> MODERATOR JAMES: That's what I thought. So owning a car in Brazil is crucial to having a monetary advantage, would you say?
>> Yeah.
>> MODERATOR JAMES: A train, even that plane failed, a train provided safe, quick, transportation, they would have gotten to Disneyland at the same time. That's what we mean by negative examples.
I would be curious to know from the positive examples, some things from Saudi Arabia, I know you have energy sector. Feel free?
>> I want to call on Akhmad again to take us back to Saudi Energy and how it came to be. That's a positive example, if we could have a microphone over to Ahmed, that would be awesome.
>> In terms of (off microphone)
A lot of work was done through U.S. collaboration, oil company, and then Saudi started getting involved in collaborating and buying shares over time. Saudi American company this is the history how it grew and that became a sovereign company that handles the energy sector within the country.
This is in terms of the positive third party and leapfrogging. I think in terms of potential for future leapfrogging, what we are seeing in collaboration and bringing technology and having the collaborations in Riyadh, we see a lot of growth, people come from the outside with their funding technology to grow the region in the sense. This is another positive examples we want to collaborate and learn from other countries.
>> DUAA BALAWI: I think adding on what Ahmed said and maybe touching on a concept maybe finding shared and mutual interest. You mentioned in the sing more issue, land was very much a limitation. One thing we have in the kingdom is land, foreign investments, Saudi Arabia has a lot of incentives to offer to foreign investors, hence giving them the opportunity to try to explore different regions. I think the Middle East in general is a very central region, it connects you, so it's a lucrative opportunity for investments to come here.
>> MODERATOR JAMES: Stability being a huge factor. Deterioration of the resources that outside parties would be depending on is not likely. A high likelihood it would be stable. Which is often times by design and often times the opposite is also by design.
I want to give on that topic, sorry, leave it here.
I know Conor, working with the ministry, filling out a way point with rentable batteries that are providing about six charges for cell phone. If you look at kilowatts per hour cost of charging a smartphone in these countries is orders of magnitude higher than a smartphone in other countries. It's your gateway to the rest of the world. If it costs a lot of money you are automatically going to gravitate toward solutions that need this. Conor, your experience with, maybe you would call it outside development in Djibouti. What did you see there?
How is it structured with the government and outside parties?
And then what did you see from a cultural standpoint how the people responded to the way point that had Starlink attached to it?
>> CONOR COLWELL: Yeah, thanks. Basically that project was with U.S. aid and ministry. That project we mainly focused on electricity access and water.
I think the, I guess a couple break throughs that we noticed, one was that, once there was that access to energy, cell phones were definitely the primary choice of charging.
That was what everyone wanted immediately, internet access is super valuable. Also access to media and I guess views of the outside world. That's definitely the most popular use of electricity immediately. Besides comfort from fans and lighting and things like that.
Yeah, like you were saying, it's pretty difficult to bring that back or reel that back in.
>> MODERATOR JAMES: The check box is open.
>> CONOR COLWELL: Yeah, especially with electricity, people want more as soon as they get a little bit.
>> It's we have much more devices. Now we have A.I. that consumes a huge amount of electricity. It's always changing. To the other point we were able to generate enough revenue to, I guess like economically support the ongoing operations at Way Point. We learned that's actually a hugely difficult thing because a lot of micro grids don't have a, they usually end up not being able to sell anywhere near the energy they community to the community. Working with the ministry there, that was domestic, they haven't been able to solve this problem themselves and they haven't been able to find like a private sector company that has been able to do that as well.
Yeah, I'm not sure if that answers your question.
>> MODERATOR JAMES: You are really focused on entering a space, figuring out what the critical infrastructure was like, what people wanted and how to provide meaningful steps to create meaningful connectivity or meaningful foundation for leapfrogging.
>> CONOR COLWELL: Right.
>> MODERATOR JAMES: That takes us nicely into this question. I know we all saw a slide earlier on what meaningful connectivity was. Does anyone remember what it said.
4g speeds. Access all the time.
You had to have above 20 megabits a second. These are all meaningful expectations what meaningful connectivity is going to be.
Next slide, please. When it comes to meaningful connectivity, I think the term, this is no critique of the term or companies that made it, it does a bit of an other. A classic other. I have far more meaningful connectivity. And you have meaningful connectivity. And I have done my job. And when we do that, we look at the language that is used to talk about these community and often see things like Global South. We don't think that's taking into account the right potential of these places. These are places with far more resources than anyone realizes. These are the fastest-growing populations. These are places like the hustle, I don't know how many of you have met Nigerians but I will bet they are probably harder workers than you, the hustle factor that comes into the region by just, as Conor said, getting a little access. Once you get enough access to make money or charge your phone, 5-10% more than last week, what part of you wants to go back?
No part of you wants to go back.
So, you start to make demands of your region. Let's pick this up a second, let’s leapfrog a little faster.
Which as Conor, don’t think you mentioned, but I will embellish for you there.
Conor was not mentioning that, like, the Ministry of Energy worked with them, but also then the police departments started renting batteries.
The police departments were not being provided enough energy by their own governments to do their jobs, or charge their phones or charge any of their devices.
So then you had these subsidies coming where the government themselves started to rent these batteries because no one came in as a private company to solve the problem and create a revenue model that had an equitable exchange for the Djiboutian people.
And I mean, I think if we all know anything about this land the scope of Djibouti, there's a bit of a culture around coming in and just doing what you want. So what's the future of leapfrogging for many?
I think we should ask ourselves questions right now. Are private businesses and government actors effectively achieving the connectivity SDG metrics like all of them? Because the U.N. has only hit 17% of its SDG goals with only five years left on the clock until 2030 and meaningful connectivity has actually gone backwards, not forwards. We are seeing more internet shutdowns, we’re seeing more natural disasters that are destroying grids, we’re seeing those grids in turn destroying the connectivity infrastructure.
We’re seeing awe lot of push towards really low upward mobility tech jobs wherein these people are becoming, often times in Kenya, the second they get meaningful connectivity, it's not in the sense many folks in the west would have it. It's oftentimes put into developer workshop, as a developer, you have people who do all the work to learn. Learn programming. Get a laptop through the programming school, they give them 1,000 laptops across-the-board. Then when they graduate, that means the 100 people get to keep the laptops, 900 people don't get to keep the laptops. They go backwards, back in time.
But then they are working for outside corporations like OpenAI. “60 Minutes” has a really solid segment they just did on OpenAI. Sir, can you turn this back on. How OpenAI is using Kenyan labor to do data labeling inside Nairobi and paying people minimal wages. In case anyone was wondering, I would like to continue watching. This is where we see development going for communities.
People who would get that base level. Is there a button I need to push? Because I will.
Am I getting the hook right now? I think I have 40 minutes left. I don't need the next slide for what goes here. Now that we have talked about connectivity, I want to turn things over to Raashi. It's awesome to talk about connectivity and the infrastructure that goes into it and the energy demands and building an understanding behind, unless you have something to plug the modem into, it doesn't matter you have the modem. If your internet doesn't turn on, you don't have internet access. If we acknowledge and building foundation, what are we actually insulating or protecting or providing value to the community. That may be the next question we have. I think I will hand it over to Duaa and Raashi if we can get them back on. Sir, is there two seconds. I imagine the people who are online participating are not able to hear me right now.
>> RAASHI SAXENA: I can't hear you, I can hear you in pockets actually.
>> MODERATOR JAMES: In pockets. Let's see if you can hear this in pockets. Women in a connected community and non-connected community and safety around community. Did you hear that?
>> RAASHI SAXENA: Yeah. In India, in many parts of the world, I would say general access to the internet where you have low-income households. Can everyone hear me?
>> MODERATOR JAMES: Yes.
>> RAASHI SAXENA: Okay, great. We have a lot of households that usually have access to one internet connection. You have women who probably will have or get access to do their side of the activities in terms of any tasks or even their businesses once the internet has passed on from the man to the child and then them, a lot of women also, as I said earlier use it for informal businesses, we have seen this in parts of Northeastern India and north India to carry on their businesses or work. When you have internet shut downs, some can be as long as over 100 days, 50 days, 40 days. Someone who is, for example, advocating for internet connectivity, wants to submit a report or someone has committed to an order they want to fulfill or even telemedicine facilities during COVID, I also erodes that. Someone shut down the internet in India because there was a university paper leak and someone was caught cheating. There really need to be ways in which, there are some interesting programs there on ground with Google, they are doing interesting, digital literacy programs to understand the internet and how to train women to use internet in rural communities.
I think they have trained around 5,000-6,000 women across states in the northern parts of India. There are some interesting programs that are now taking place for cyber scans as well. But yeah, it's usually women to women.
Women also are more likely not comfortable to go online because a lot of the, they stay indoors and sometimes their freedom of speech and expression could get curtailed, women are more culturally sensitive towards taking part in online activities. Of course if there's interest we have cultural and in terms of the remote activities, and how the internet could be an equalizer for a lot of persons with disabilities as well.
>> MODERATOR JAMES: Let's pause there. There's a lot to digest there. The great equalizer, if you are getting properly de-programmed here, I think we have to admit the internet is the great equalizer and megabits per second determine how much of the pie you get.
We talk about the great equalizer. We can give you some graphs on that. We will skip that because we are already running out of time.
This is a really easy format to understand here.
The correlation, which you can't see the bottom but our source from the website, our world in data, phenomenal website check it out. Versus GDP per capita for continents and the countries within the continents. If you look at South America, 1992 through 2022, we have only Paraguay, with its outside influence from the United States, managing to get above 5,000 kilowatts per person.
And 5,000 kilowatts per person means that you have larger share of the GDP, which I wish we had the interactivity of this up, but you don’t have control of my laptop, so you’re all going to have to take my numbers for what they are in my head. But the average, if you have 4,000-5,000 kilowatts per person, the average GDP per capita is $32,000-$42,000 per person. People in the 500 kilowatt, their national GDP is $1,000 per person, per year.
You are getting less GDP than someone with 5 megabits, they are likely a 50 k salary person per year.
Here we have Oceana, under 5,000 chilling 10,000, then you do to Africa, sorry North America and Asia.
You will see these folks way up here E. the British colony, they are all right here below the amnesia.
Belize killing at under 5,000, closer to about 1,000 kilowatts per hour. When you look at this data that put them on par with a lot of these Arab states that had, like you were saying, mass influx of energy to develop by doing that you have these states suddenly leapfrogging far beyond, what were you saying first California oil?
>> Early 70s.
>> MODERATOR JAMES: I'm pretty good at history, we were in South Korea long before the 1970s. We helped since South Africa is on par with Saudi Arabia, you leapt frog past, and now focused on obviously oil and they are -- go ahead.
>> One thing to note, that is worthy, the infrastructure wasn't really existent before that, either the infrastructure was built with the --
>> MODERATOR JAMES: You are saying the cities themselves weren't built?
>> Yes, the cities, the infrastructure, everything grew with this.
>> DUAA BALAWI: I think adding onto what Ahmed said, going back to Saudi history, we’re very much a nomadic culture. Sons, and men and women of the desert. We had our tents, our camels, that was our main means of transportation.
So, really oil has leapfrogged us all the way into industrialization and has allowed us to change…It changed our culture, it has led us through into urban development and has changed the way that Saudis live and experience their lives today.
>> MODERATOR JAMES: That's beautiful. I hadn't given it a lot of thought. I knew you were nomadic people by nature but didn't include that in my cultural riffing.
In that video I showed earlier, we talk about, we had seen Afghanistan gone through its own troubles. Afghanistan major oil developing country was probably far up there with Oman and Saudi Arabia, because of what happened and the video, leapfrogging you can read any war or history or any strategy book of societies of mankind worldwide, take out the grid, you take out the progress of the community. That's important to see that as we see the rise and fall of civilization, and create more awareness. There's no way we will get to that by, huge you are thinking of sharing battery technology with others, I think that's massive, something we will all need. If we look at Africa, it's not great for us, got to be honest. There's a lot to be said about why there is. I this is going to skep, let's break it down, every view. North America, GDP $63,20. Energy consumption per capita, $54,661 kilowatts an hour person [ Reading chart ]
There's a direct correlation with this attachment. Trust me there's plenty of people that know that.
I don't think we will do this part. We will go back pretty quick.
I want to give Conor and yourselves as well the opportunity to discuss like, okay, Conor, you have done small infrastructure plans. You have done little grid deployments and help people, I would look to know what your thoughts are, I think a lot of folks here, if I was you I would feel this way. That's a really cool thing wiper snapper thing is doing. That's a fun initiative, I would love to see that at the UN. But I don't think that's where we are coming from. These are pilots focusing on how it can skill and what it means to create sovereignty in that way. I would love to give Conor an opportunity to speak, and Purnima, you too.
Sounds like you have a lot to say, I appreciate you have gotten into the chat.
>> CONOR COLWELL: Thank you. Maybe take a little step back and explain. There are a number of different companies out there that have put energy generation systems and containerized form factor and sending them around the world. I guess one thing we're very much focused on, I guess, how efficiently can we convert a raw kilowatt hour, how can we convert that for humans. Traditionally with a lot of the micro grids out there right now. I think I mentioned why a lot of them fail, all they do is make electricity and you have to sell that to the community and that requires wires and all this stuff. It also requires a community to have things to consume that energy. If you have a future and that model kind of breaks down. But yeah, our broad goal is really not just how we can solve the energy aspect because like you know, we completely see as foundational to, I suppose you could say civilization to some extent. Some combination of energy, plus raw resources plus information and those three things allow you to build almost anything. But yeah, I think our goal is, it's mentioned a few times. We would like to see about 100,000 way points built, distributed around the world. That we estimate could impact about 100 million people. That's looking at the raw billion or so folks who don't have access to clean water and the also internet. We are kind of taking, I don't want to say a double leapfrog approach but system changes when it comes to how infrastructure has been done in the past. You look at density centers. It's a super tangled web of wires and pipes and all this and many points along that web for leaks, inefficiencies, like electrons being lost, water being lost, fuel even, the model not just how those resources are distributed to communities but what you can actually generate and create on site. With baseline electricity. To your point, I think we are really trying to approach a variety of problems and using the technology that is available now, which I know is entirely possible. This is the thing, all of this is going to get coordinated.
>> MODERATOR JAMES: Let's speak to coordination. You are hearing, liquid star with the stations trying to drop livable, they are traveling to the way points, but the people at way star now you have people, instead of using the delivery service and dropping the battery off with the bike guy to take it back to the station they are like I will walk the 1.5 back because I have Starlink and I will get my work done. I was a big supporter of, we were excited by Starlink a few years ago, my own region in east Africa got -- if people are willing to walk to the way point just to have access to the electricity, there may be something to buy a Wi-Fi -- if we pair those things together, people are renting this battery to charge their phones 6-7 times in a couple days and using it as a gateway access point. I made it look cool because I really think it's important the Global South it shouldn't look like it's an NGO project. It should look like something creativity, this is something my co-founder Keeks and I made at Parabl. We come from these regions. We are admittedly quite westernized what we do also have the is perspective people are about 2.3, 2.6 billion large, the amount of people who have lack of energy access is a huge portion of that same community, right? There's ways to pair these struggles together. I would love to hear from you, Keeks on this. I think the numbers on energy access of the populations of the planet. I think was the 40% of people. Yes?
>> I believe it was 47% of the planet doesn't have reliable access to energy.
>> MODERATOR JAMES: Consistent energy.
>> Consistent energy. When you look at that, that ends up being millions and millions of people, right? When we consider, obviously the humanitarian issue,, there's a power outage. Let's say somebody gets hurt. How do you navigate to the nearest hospital? How do you contact family members, what have you? When you Zoom out and, there's a website net blocks cost calculator to see on a per country basis if the internet is shut down which comes with the power shut down, how much money is lost from that country's GDP. When you take that into consideration the lack of consistent and reliable access to energy becomes not only humanitarian issue, usually when someone is pulling the plug, it's so someone can't support the thing being done, if people don't think the access to energy will be reliable, it is difficult to up scale. Difficult to turn the router on.
>> MODERATOR JAMES: Speak to up scaling, I think that's my next question anyway, I guess from a Nigerian perspective, speak to the up scale. That's something we are focusing on, how can we, how could one individual from a parable have 16 devices to his parable and that person is enabling for upskilling from their communities. I think you have a lot to say about cancel culture.
>> I didn't go to school formally for engineering like Jarrel. A lot of the way points work currently, in addition to being water and energy generation T they are looking for ways to say cool, let's use this excess energy for compute, right? They are setting up micro data centers with way points and long-term ways to cache. When you think in terms of hyper, you can look at the list can find the videos, cool, people want the jobs in the region, instead of people to redundantly pay and have these videos, cool, let's redirect you to local internet, you don't have to pay for the extra data tied to this. You can still upskill. You can still watch the videos, go through the curriculum, study the code, get a job.
>> MODERATOR JAMES: That's where I would love to hear your side from the Saudi perspective, as a youth leader and seeing that hustle culture come in your own community. But to Keeks point, you are working every day of your life to get an internet connection for something like brick laying. You can be online to learn more, to get a different upskill.
When you look at why they do this in regions that don't have the money to be spending on data and watching the same video over and over again, if you spend 15% of your weekly paycheck watching one video 7-8 times in some region that is always going to be the barrier for, said in 70s, challenge the assumption which your infrastructure or reality is built. When we talk about these communities, they are challenging, wait, why don't we redefine what edge cashing is. I think the most realistic thing is the library. We removed the library experience by replacing it with the online experience. Raashi, as we start, about 20, 15 minutes left, 10 minutes left and we will open it up for questions, I would love to hear from you two, specifically women who are hustling and creating upskilling opportunities for themselves. How does the internet play into this and what is the reality for you?
>> I will speak on youth and women interchangeably, because I'm not sure if people in the room, almost 60% of Saudi nationals is under 35, so the entire nation could be lumped into the category, more or less. One key thing, they are very hungry for success and educating themselves and most importantly for making an impact. You see these kids they are 16, 17 years old. The internet has given them the ability to connect with a much wider network, but also all around the globe to launch initiatives, NGOs, startups. I was at an event a few weeks ago, 17-year-old, company is getting bought up by this big thing, I'm like wow.
Through internet and AI and existing infrastructure. I would like to see that knowledge transfer happen to regions here in the Middle East. Specifically when it comes to regions in north, or North Africa or disproportionately impacted by war and the international conflict in order for us to further support those communities.
>> MODERATOR JAMES: Regional coalitions?
Yeah, I love it. That takes us back to the beginning. Why we believe there should be a last mile coalition. Raashi, I believe runs the Ted Ex chapter for the world economic forum. She is responsible for fostering a ton of entrepreneurs and youth trying to come up and make something of themselves.
>> Thank, I'm no longer with the chapters any more, but I'm part of the youth centric chapter, the global shapers. Every year they have an election and I'm chapter head for the moment.
I see opportunities when it comes to the internet. Especially India where women have a huge gap, it's surprisingly a lot larger than a lot of surrounding companies. I always say these women are very flexible and having access to basic needs of the internet can, there are a lot of creative ways in terms of livelihoods. Economic well-being, political well-being is necessary.
I would also say there are very interesting programs around navigating through the digital literacy of it. We live in a world of scams, which have deteriorated our financial systems and sectors across the world. There are organisations that specifically work on how people can bypass through phishing scams and how you can be safe online, how people can use VPN's.
A lot of actors are also doing a lot of sensitive work so how can you protect your own identity online. Some of the very evident work done by whistle-blowers across the world, I feel there's a lot to be done with access, yes. But then there's also work that has to be done after that in terms of how does one become literate with, you know, enabling this ecosystem and how do you Pay it Forward?
Because I would say there's a lot of things out there.
>> On that note I would like to transition us into the Q&A. I think what you are talking about is something, I think there's a lot of people here from the Youth 20 movement and Brazilians here from Y-20. I think when you talk about people being under 35, the majority population in Saudi Arabia, my own region in -- I would like to hear about policy outcomes you can see around the y hitch 20 folks leading the technology conversation. We have about ten minutes left. I would love for anyone and everyone to get involved.
Ma'am in the corner, I would love to hear from you, you have been avidly paying attention, locked in the whole time. I would love to start with you?
>> Yeah, sure thing. Like I opened in the discussion, the policies were widely agreed upon. There was no need to negotiate or lobby. We were very much on an agreement that is important for all, I think on the policy recommendations that emerged, one was on government subsidizing. I think that emerged from COVID-19, things moving to remote education, they didn't have access to internet and therefore they didn't have access to education for the majority of two years.
Communities living within the United States.
>> Exactly. You can see that now that kids are back in school, those same children are not necessarily getting the best grades or the right baseline.
You might think it's not really that big of an impact, only two years they were behind on school, but they missed out on some fundamental impacts. One we wanted to focus on was telehealth. When it comes to reproductive healthcare, how to take care of your baby, what to eat, it's important to give them the right level of information, that doesn't necessarily happen through brochures or papers, they need continuous access to the internet, they need the ability to answer crucial questions effectively to protect their health and safeguard the health of their children. So these were maybe two of the key things that emerged out of the Y-20 discussions this year.
>> MODERATOR JAMES: I love that. There's tons of historic precedent, our birthrate, one in four was gone, by 15-20 years later, there was a women's health movement, I think the 100,000 woman march, you had 10,000 women going from village to village, don't have babies this young or back to back. It's detrimental to your health. If you look at Ethiopia from 1992-2010, somewhere around there, they go from bottom 15% to top 15% birthrate. It's the education of women. To the greater point of Kik's, the majority are women. When we go into distributions of Parabls we are looking populations of women to distribute, the economic capacity and responsibility there is unmatched. The hunger, we have a few minutes and I would love to hear from any of you all on any of the topics you want.
>> ALEX MORA: I'm Alex Mora from Brazil. I'm actually living and working here in Saudi. I just want to leave some words about everything I heard today, it's a fantastic project you had. From the perspective you mentioned, having the internet as an equalizer, I think one crucial bringing power to everyone is to put education in everything. Because that will be in the interest of every society, and every community. Find a way to attach all your projects to educational primary school, secondary schools, higher education, everywhere, that project of power, I think it will be the best to make things like leapfrogging the lives of everyone, to make them getting better vetted from them.
Just mention my background, I came from 19 years in the Brazilian research and network, I work with network engineer project. Access and architecture. I'm in the membership team of the GNA, which is the group of volunteers formed by professionals from research institutions from all over the world. We have a mission to bring international collaboration for research and education everywhere and help meet humanities challenges and make sure the technology, infrastructure, investments all after partners and investments.
I would like to bring this to your attention. There are other groups of volunteers working on things similar. We are pretty much working in a similar fashion. We have work groups, we have engineers, we have researchers looking for solutions like you all are bring access.
>> MODERATOR JAMES: Stick around then, I want to talk to you.
>> Our friends from Brazil, we have been doing a lot of things in Brazil. They are very creative. The education network, made a public/private partnership with support from government. They made sure that everyone understood education and science are not competing with incumbents or providers. So they managed to have agreements, for instance, that's an amazing job to power grids in the country, they have fiberoptics running across the country from the power lines. One pair of that fiber can be shared. The decision backbone runs on that infrastructure of different regions in the country and they manage to bring the backbone capacity to 100 gigabytes per second to higher education. And now they are connecting the primary level and secondary. Schools, universities, everyone is benefiting from that. Also the project, commercial providers in Brazil, they also have managed to make agreements with commercial providers. They are swapping capacity and they are bringing access to low interest communities or places where the incumbents have the incentives.
>> MODERATOR JAMES: They didn't have the motivation.
With that to connect schools and universities and they are also making good business with commercial providers.
>> MODERATOR JAMES: Let's give someone a chance to respond. Sir, could you give to him. What are you saying with the fiber lines and power lines together? Brazil's forest. There's a lot of forest. If you are going to deforest something, better not to do it twice.
The decision to pair those two utilities quite closely in the dark fiber makes a lot of sense. That's what I'm hearing as well. I want to real quick, all of Wikipedia could fit, if you have a stick in your pocket, 8 gigabytes, all of Wikipedia could fit on that. The perception we have on the internet is it couldn't fit, that it is some giant database that has to be maintained by some internet gods.
>> I'm Fouad Rwabuhungu, from Tanzania. I just mentioned my country now. I’ve learned it, you love Tanzania.
Thank you very much.
And I want to talk about the story of leapfrogging in our country.
It’s basically on rural electrification, where we collaborate with the World, European Union.
They are helping us to do the rural electrifications.
But at the same time we use the universal funds to deploy communication 4G sites to the village. So almost all villages are now covered with electricity, but the issue now is connectivity. But that’s done through collaboration between the World Bank and the European Union.
>> MODERATOR JAMES: We are talking to the technology minister, we are trying to get a pilot going in Tanzania.
Well, thank you, all. This has been awesome. I really appreciate everybody coming, this has been a solid showing by Brazil in Saudi Arabia. This is what we are talking about, ownership and sovereignty taking those utilities for what they are and taking leadership when it comes to those developments for your own regions. We believe in leapfrog regions and everyone should take a moment to not let them be called the Global South and put themselves in the mindset, we can go further beyond the west, that's what it means to leapfrog. Thank you to Duaa, Keeks, Conor and Raashi. We will be here the rest of the week. We would love to talk about leapfrog regions and potential infrastructure and potential of your countries.
Thanks.
Whew!