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Bring internet to millions in Africa

In an effort to close the digital divide with the developing world, Microsoft revealed plans to provide 10 million people with internet access through satellite on Wednesday, with half of them living in Africa.

At a summit with African leaders in Washington, DC, hosted by President Joe Biden, the technology corporation declared that it would start the satellite project immediately away with a priority on providing internet connectivity for the first time to portions of Egypt, Senegal, and Angola.

According to Microsoft President Brad Smith, the company's engineers in Nairobi and Lagos have pleased them.

According to Smith, who spoke to AFP, "there is no shortage of talent in Africa, but there is a severe shortage of opportunity."

Microsoft said that it would increase its operations in Nigeria and the Democratic Republic of the Congo in addition to providing internet connectivity in more remote areas of the United States, Guatemala, and Mexico in partnership with satellite service provider Viasat.

Smith claims that the primary obstacle to internet access has been the lack of affordable, dependable energy, which only reaches around half of Africans.

People who don't visit or think about Africa frequently find it difficult to imagine it, according to Smith.

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When it comes to broadband, he explained, "you cannot have access to the internet at any speed without access to energy."

He claimed that Microsoft was concentrating on developing low-cost solutions for locations without both electricity and the internet.

A lot of governments in Africa, according to Smith, have surpassed their Western counterparts in terms of ease of regulation because there isn't the same "extraordinary web of licencing regimes" in place as there was in the past. Smith noted that there is widespread support for bringing internet access to the continent.

Africans with commercial expertise frequently run ministries because, in Smith's words, "they know how business works and they know how government works."

I believe it's more likely that governments will wish to regulate what is available on the internet rather than its availability, he said, "even in nations where we may encounter more authoritarian difficulties."

The most recent initiative is a part of Microsoft's Airband Initiative, which intends to give internet connectivity to 250 million people by the end of 2025, with 100 million of those individuals living in Africa.

According to the UN's International Telecommunication Union, 2.9 billion people, or more than one-third of the globe, have never used the internet, despite fast advancements in affluent countries and several significant rising economies.