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.
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>> Are you ready? No sound. Okay, we're good, yeah, we're on channel three. Yes. Okay. Hard to see the screen behind me. Thankful to be here, this is an important discussion we're going to have today with a number of expert who is are going to be sharing a bit about the development and the need for internet connectivity.
And the impact that the internet connectivity will have in communities across the content of Africa and beyond. For some background and for those who are not familiar that we've been doing at Syracuse University in collaboration with the open research foundation a nonprofit that we founded collectively called internet program. We'll see in front here for those who are online you'll see this device in front of us. I want to provide a little background here though the Africa we want vision seeks to make Africa global. (Audio cutting out). With accessible digital services for government, businesses and citizens, it emphasizes e‑commerce, participation in the fourth Industrial Revolution for countries across the continent, however challenges like limited infrastructure, low internet access where only 27% of African rural communities remain. (Audio cutting out). Land degradation, water shortages, the mic is really not working too well. Maybe we'll try the hand mic, yeah? No, I need the mic, this is not working. Yeah. Is this better? Perfect. Sorry, folks, we are at the Internet Governance Forum but for some reason we have not figured out how mic technology works but I think we'll start over I want to first welcome folks to this discussion we're going to start over as if nothing happened. We are in a city I come to often in a place that is opening itself up to the world and I want to thank the hosts for inviting us here to this beautiful facility and a country that is doing rapid change and rapidly expanding its access and connections to the world for those who haven't been here before you're witnessing a fascinating transformation and I think would be remiss if we didn't mention that and thank the hosts for inviting us and welcome us to the space so the conversation we're going to have today is largely about what happens when communities don't have access to internet, how those communities are able to then rebound and be able to participate in the global economy, what this means for sustainable development and in particular with a focus on the agricultural center. We have the internet backpack.
And we have shown this the last three years where we're able to connect communities, rural communities in particular, which is our area of focus, the 27% of whom don't have access to internet, don't have access to the ability to interact and correspond to people around the world.
To sharing crops on the global markets, to be able to develop their creativity and share it with the world, don't have access to health care and basic educational opportunities.
We think that's a fundamental problem here. And the backpack is one solution that can help facilitate for solving that problem. It can facilitate for the implementation of the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals and it can facilitate the African Union's own agenda 2063. We have an amazing group of folks here and online, as you can see Professor Lee McKnight, Yusuf, and another legend in the internet space and my brother here from Nigeria who I have gotten to have lunch with this afternoon. And so we're really here to talk about the ways with which we can try to facilitate providing connectivity. But what is uses, how we developed it over time and how to bring it to the panel.
I will open the floor to Dr. Lee McKnight to talk about the backpack and we'll open it up for the panel discussion. I know some of the other panelists have other panels to speak at so we'll try to get them before they go and we'll open up for some discussants and in the room to begin the conversation. I am sure you're getting tired of hearing me talk I will hand it over to Dr. McKnight, Lee
>> LEE MCKNIGHT: Thank you for this opportunity to discuss further our work with the internet backpack. I am not the inventor, I am a coinventor, there's been a team involved in developing the technology and bringing it to the point that it's at as you are seeing it in the room. First a quick background, what were the origins, what was a purpose? It was to bring connectivity anywhere no matter what meaning with or without a local power supply, with or without cell infrastructure. We wanted to make it possible to connect. Originally this was a National Science Foundation supported research effort. Eventually this combination of technologies was urgently requested by the democratic Republic of Congo when we had literally just exhibited as a proof of concept or prototype.
And they were saying they needed it for real and we were saying we are not ready and they said we don't care we want it right now and we brought it out of the lab. That was seven years ago and over the last seven years, the technology has been refined, and it's as, went from what I'm aware of at least in a dozen countries being used for a variety of purposes. But first background on the technology, it's not just a connectivity tool. It's also designed as a mini microgrid meaning sustainable power and energy is a key part of the design. Since again, if we're out in rural Africa or in a disaster zone we can count on access to electricity. Or a utility grid. So in the pack itself, there's a foldable solar panel, there's ‑‑ it's depending on the model one or two batteries and there's a number of different devices that can be with the solar panel. You can recharge everything, keep maintaining connectivity indefinitely without access to utility grid of course it's easier to plug it in and recharge everything if that's ‑‑ if power's available. So you can connect via cellular network, to about ten kilometers away from the nearest cell tower.
So if you're in a location where your phone says there's no bars or access the pack has a more powerful device inside it called a point router and it acts like a booster and create a wi‑fi hotspot around the pack itself. There's also a satellite internet access so you can create a shared connectivity and there's also a mesh network radio network device in called the bear tooth that can create even if there's no access to cellular network, even if you're not using the satellite, you can essentially make ‑‑ do a point to point connection, and enable like a walkie talkie. People to talk over several kilometers.
Perhaps again in circumstances in which there could be emergency circumstances. So the idea is satellite, cellular, wi‑fi, off grid, mesh networking, there's one more aspect which is software and that was patented in 2022. We do see the amount of bandwidth used obviously if we're out in remote Africa all the bandwidth is precious, right?
It's a precious resource so we don't want to waste it so we don't waste it. We use it more efficiently. With something we called Edgeware from our years of research.
And that's package together is what the backpack constitutes and I should mention one more aspect what we're mainly doing is connecting to cloud services from anywhere on the planet including remote Africa and the pack itself is in ‑‑ managed from those cloud services. So you don't need any special skills to operate it. If you can, again, operate a cell phone, you can become an internet backpack operator, that's another design consideration. We wanted to make it easy to use, portable, fast to set up within minutes. You can get this up and going, anywhere across Africa and now we get to the use cases where really that's the discussion today here in whether it's for, I said emergency monitoring, CO2 monitoring of the volcanos or internet, essentially, now if we take those sensors not for CO2 monitoring but monitoring props and fields or internet of things IoT type resources that's where the backpack can act as a connectivity hub to support farmers in Africa and other communities in providing access and monitoring to agricultural resources. I don't want to take up too much time. I think I laid out what the combinations of technologies does and where it fits in as a connectivity hub for digital transformation of agriculture and trade across Africa. You know, going forward. Potentially. It's not magic. It is just a backpack but it has a role to play where connectivity's limited and that includes many communities, unfortunately, across Africa. Thank you.
>> Thank you Dr. McKnight I'm going to jump to our esteemed colleague here to my right only because I know you have another panel. Mama Mary you're going to follow up because the young folks would say you're an OG, you are the matriarch of West Africa IGF so I'm going to quickly follow with you after so just be prepared. But doctor, your work has been centered around making sure that the private sector has been engaged both in the discussions on governance but also the responsibilities for facilitating for sustainable development. At our quick lunch break which we didn't meet and know we were going to be on this panel at lunch at your lunch break you raised the prospects of the Africa free trade agreements and the way connectivity could help facilitate this important endeavor to facilitate of the development of an interconnected Africa what role to you see the private sector playing and how does interconnectivity fair in this kind of facilitator for that trade system that you were talking about at lunch?
>> Thank you very much Professor Yusuf. I want to also thank my friend the president of the data foundation who I thank for the invitation and also plus one to your gracious accommodation of the government of Saudi Arabia for hosting us, this is really great and of course to thank Dr. McKnight for that wonderful presentation. I am the chair of the advisory council of Africa ICT alliance. This is an alliance of more than 40 countries in Africa, made up of ICT associations, companies, and individual stakeholders. And we do advocacy. Engaging with government to fast tracking the issue of connectivity, the issue of prosperity and the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals. In my private life I happen to be the principle consultant to contemporary consulting so digitalization, building centers, we are in the forefront of cybersecurity awareness and assessment and research. So this presentation is so germane, so appropriate in that, because when I read the concept note, it talks about, it relates to the sustainable development goal, removing, enabling prosperity and a particular agricultural, I was thrilled to be here. To participate in the panel. You know, the United Nations commission for science and technology, sorry, United Nations for Africa, the commission report 2023, that report reflected a connection between internet penetration and GDP per capita. So a 10% increase in internet penetration using a device like this will enable up to 8.2% increase in GDP per capita. So it is substantive that we boost our internet connectivities. Versus ‑‑
It's very, very important and in Nigeria we're 70% connected. By the time we did the same number validation which will reduce to 61%. We will see a chunk of people not quite yet connected. And in the rural areas, we need to come up with innovation. And how to reach them. And especially farm lands, our farmers basically so this kind of device is a game changer that perhaps from the private sector perspective based on advocacy because we believe there should be increased collaboration, okay, and for government, private sector, civil society, academic, technical community to come together to see how you can fulfill or achieve the goal of connectivity and in September the United Nations signed this pact for the future and it has global digital compact and that is talking about bridging the digital divide. Number two, is to ensure that everybody, everyone in the world benefits from digitized economy, and number three human rights for talking about digital governance and number five talking about using of AI. Okay, for good. So we in the private sector, we are part of it and we committed to pushing forward tools like this, okay, innovative products like this, maybe through activities through proof of concept, and through direct intervention so that more people can be absolved, more people can participate, it's for the farmers now we have the free trade zone which is a powerful agreement by government it is a beautiful one. African government have done really well really but we knew need to ensure our people benefit from this agreement. And this framework or the tools that can make that possible now we need to do a lot of capacity, development, and I believe the recording can be sent round to many of the stakeholders of what is available. The capacity development has been to be a regulatory framework in terms of policies, to say, okay, let us all agree that we need to push this like this. And connect with the south areas. And there are a number of groups in that regard, not just in the private sector. Other groups need to be brought in. You must not neglect any group at all. We have a principle that was agreed to in April this year. And it talks about meaningful participation. Always talk about meaningful connectivity. It also talks about getting everybody to be involved. Okay? So we believe in private sector we believe so much in that. And that is why I'm here today. That's why we believe that most engage in Nigeria we engage across Africa and engage worldwide and we will continue to engage because there is something good. Once people are connected it benefit the private sector, seriously because our interest is that there's more market, more demand for our product. So most people are connected it will be demand for our services, for our apps, and what have you to ‑‑ I hope I will be able to talk about those as I answer your question.
>> YUSUF ABDUL‑QADIR: You did quite comprehensively so I appreciate you laying out the way that ecosystems will drive the growth and development and you beautifully connected to the way with which the free trade zone is really helping to kind of be a next stage of that and the role that the internet will have to be an accelerant of that. We have continued to talk about internet governance and center that as a part of the conversation and in West Africa IGF there's always been this culture of recognizing that no one's left behind especially rural communities. I think as Dr. McKnight said earlier we initially begun as an emergency response process, this backpack that has evolved to other uses and in the educational use cases and in Liberia and elsewhere. We've seen a significant increase per our research in the involvement of girls and boys in schools. In Ghana we've been able to identify that. Girls weren't participating in school and once we brought the backpack through the important research of, I guess Dr. Jane who is no longer a doctoral student but Dr. Jane who is a part of the African community into the program we've been able to see that bringing the backpack to her village in Ghana, her rural village in Ghana was first able to provide the ability for teachers to learn how to access the internet and then teach their students how to do research on the internet but the interesting effect was the increased involvement of boys and girls so given the large work that you've had in building the future generation of internet users across Africa but particularly in West Africa and given the roles you've played in helping to make sure that no one's left behind why is this so important at this moment and what is the effect that this will have on rural communities beyond just education and emergency response in conclusive of African culture?
>> MARY UDUMA: Okay, thank you very much for giving me the floor and thank you, Wisdom for inviting me and I want to lend my voice for thanking the government of Saudi Arabia for such a great outing for us in ‑‑ we can't say thank you enough for them. For me this is a passion. A passion in the sense that my advocacy is for digital justice for my community. Whether that is in Gambia or Nigeria. We want the communities to be connected. And I think there's a solution here that I'm looking at. The fact that I may not need electricity to get my people connected is a plus and something we should embrace with all our hearts and all our minds. I know that the community needs ‑‑ each of the communities, they need e‑learning, you know what happened during the COVID in some were cut off from education because they didn't have connectivity so with this, I think we will be able to surmount that challenge we had during the COVID. We also look at the eHealth that would also be part of the services, all the connectivity that will have the community. And now we have food crisis in ‑‑ since COVID. We've been having a food crisis and terrorism in West Africa has not helped so we believe that with this, with agriculture using this device would also help us in our rural communities who are the mainstay of that center of the economy.
When we develop agro policies we can also benefit from what the government is doing. Is also going to help in the eGovernment. We want to know what the government is saying, if government is saying is rolling out new policies our people in the rural area will be able to benefit and know about it and key into it and be part of the process. The doctor said something about the digital economy. Digital economy would also include the agro economy and when our agro economic is digitalized.
We'll find out that we can also contribute to the GDP of the country. So for me, and I belong in a group in Nigeria, the advisory group for community networks and this is a big solution for us. Drop anywhere. Any community, the first time I mentioned this to my group, some of them were willing to, oh, let's snap it up, how much is it going to cost? We want to drop it in our community, we want our community to be connected, our people to benefit from what internet provides, so for us, is something that we are very passionate about and we think that it can bring quick solutions for community networks. And so working with other stakeholders that are community stakeholders for instance the eyes of this world, the government, with our regulator or policymaker that is interested in community networks, yes, in, I think it was 209 ‑‑ you would think that Nigeria is covered because we have operators that will give us connectivity. But it was found that there are so many communities where you don't have the dial tone, you don't have connectivity.
You don't have power. So many of them, there were over 300 communities yet to be covered so this down a game changer to drop this in these communities and they will receive their own digital justice to get connected, to have their e‑learning, to have their e‑agriculture, to have the eGovernment.
And to have eRegulation, if there are regulations coming out.
Then they will have meaningful connectivity. Just as you mentioned. It could also bring meaningful connectivity to our communities. So with this, would be able to leverage on, you know, sustainability of the community networks. Sometimes you need to view the, what is it called? The mesh or the technology around connecting, but this one is that you have only a backpack and you get to know where in the desert, in the night where there are, what is it called, where you have the water log areas that you don't have land to even connect. There are some of our communities you have to... this is water and water you just put bridge to walk into your house. You have to build your house to a point then you are in. Raise it up for you to be able to put a shelter all by yourself. So it is doable. It is something that will bring connectivity to such areas and very difficult areas to assess. Where the commercial operators will not reach, this will reach and will look at strategies to make it happen. Is IDAP PPP with the business people with effector with the private people.
If you bring this to a community and show them just like we have testified at Ghana you will see the enthusiasm and the excitement that will come. Oh, we can access the internet with this and there's longer for data at the rural area as well so they can also connect and do their access the internet and do education.
One of the women in the advisory committee said she refused to go to the investor. She's now a doctor, she did everything online.
If someone in my village or community could get internet access, could do education or high education and not even ‑‑ is cheaper for instance and so those are things that we know that this revolutionary equipment is bring to our community. So it is ‑‑ we are passionate about it and we are interested in making sure that our community gets connected. Thank you.
>> YUSUF ABDUL‑QADIR: That was beautiful. Dr. Jensen.
>> What I want ‑‑ I mentioned it briefly before, what I want to conclude with is that it is very important we get the community to own this. There's going to understand areas with consult with... we need to engage them, thoroughly, in terms of sustainability of the product. And safety. The security. And then not only that, in terms of regulation, okay, need to be consulted because at the local level, you know, when it comes to multistakeholder engagement is bottom up, so this will have consultation at the local level. I believe Wisdom is good at that. Bottom-up engagement process. So this will be the community need to be so empowered, so that they are watching in the future through this so we need to demonstrate the use cases that look, this is what we're talking about. Those in remote areas, they are connected because of this. To see that feedback at the next IGF in Norway.
>> YUSUF ABDUL‑QADIR: Two comments I want to make and then we'll go to Dr. McKnight for a question. And Mary and Dr. Jensen we will keep in touch for sure. It was like if you were in my brain. There's a connectivity happening there but you really did speak to a number of things that we are actively having conversations about in ASIP. And so, what we've observed in our research, when we tried the backpack in Costa Rica, when the funding dried, excuse me, I will get to that in a second.
When the funding dried and we were able to deploy the backpack, the backpack will use either through a high-powered antenna will connect to a cellular tower. Or connect to satellite and obviously satellite data is more expensive the community then pooled their resources which was quite beautiful talking to the ownership. The community said, hey, we want to make sure our kids and our communities are still able to access the internet. And because the backpack connects to cellular is able to use SIM cards you can imagine that one person can afford a data plan but when shared across a hundred families that becomes affordable and sustainable and we didn't expect that communities would then pool those resources together. We didn't expect communities will both find value in this and then say, hey, like let's collectively work to ensure we can provide this to our communities and that is what we have observed on the regulatory framework side a part of the way we had discussions about funding these sorts of experiences beyond ‑‑ grants are important and aid funding is necessary but it's not sustainable necessarily. And they're helpful to begin to go beyond proof of concept but to begin to kind of build framework to establish this as a proper intermediary. But as we talked about governments have laws that develop regulations of which typically internet service providers have to provide a percentage of the funds that they would be able to enable communities who are not commercially viable to provide access to. Those are typically called universal access or service funds. Many countries have universal service and access funds. And it's not economically feasible often to be able to still develop infrastructure. Where the government has to choose between do I provide water sanitation or do I provide internet access it's not a very difficult choice to make. And so what we found is, an untapped resource, our universal access funds Kenya for instance has one hundred million dollars in universal access funds it is not feasible for them to build fiber optic cables and infrastructure because there'll be tens and hundreds of millions of dollars but it may be feasible to leverage this technology. Dr. McKnight can you speak to that a little bit and incorporate the cost of the backpack per a question here in the auditorium about the way with which we've begun to advocate for the utilization for funds, what are those and why are they necessary and important?
>> LEE MCKNIGHT: Sure, thank you very much and thank you for including me in this very important conversation. First in general universal service programs have been around going for quite some time. In North America, in Western Europe, for building rural connectivity many, many decades ago. Now if we take those same kinds of programs as we mentioned Yusuf, to ‑‑ in African nations where they exist, the challenge is for the per capita income in a rural area, where the government would have said Kenya, let's focus on Kenya for a moment. Traditional telecommunications infrastructure, we're talking billions of dollars for bringing full cell tower, fiber optics into all parts of rural Africa. It's just not practical or feasible. Those funds are not utilized because the government has to look at it honestly and say, okay even if we put this cell tower out here it will rot because the local income levels will not be able to sustain the maintenance of this infrastructure over time so instead let's look at the backpack in the case where we are using cellular networks we're using the same amount of bandwidth as one cellular across a community. We're subdividing, now it's 35 people or one hundred people. It's a community sharing one cell network and for connectivity over time. With this clever bandwidth management capabilities and I will give a shout‑out to Rob and Tim here who are on ‑‑ listening in on the Zoom. The firm that makes the pack. And that filed the patent on it on that capability so now we do the math whatever it costs for your data plan now you divide it by 30 and that's the cost for a community. The design parameter we were thinking originally was 25 people but we, in the case of Ghana that we talked about we had up to 35 people simultaneously using one cell line to maintain decent internet connectivity so the economics work out and we're still at early stages I know the firm, you could bring the cost of the pack down but the first level the real issue is the cost of data over time and to maintain connectivity of the community that said we're not going to wait for the government. It could be self‑help of communities. It could be a mixture where there is some business of some scale in the area and they're saying, we will pitch in some amount because this is going to benefit us. And now we get to the community service programs. If we have programs that support and permit community networks this is essentially a special case of a kind of starter community network. That maybe perhaps could build out more additional infrastructure over time beyond the backpack itself. So regulatory reform to enable or permit community networks is ‑‑ it is a key step now going back to the economics itself, there's different models of the pack and this comes with the Starlink Mini so if you're which is more expensive than a cell line.
But it's much cheaper satellite data than the current model, the model that you have there in the room. Which does work everywhere, but if you have to use a satellite, it's ‑‑ I think it's prohibitively expensive without some kind of government support in the most remote communities. So the pack itself, I'm the professor not the sales guy, I'm not trying to sell anything other than it's important for connecting the communities but the packs can cost right now one model called the lite internet backpack is 12,000 dollars U.S. the other model is 20,000 dollars which is the fully equipped one with the warranty and the year and data plan and so on. So this is not affordable for one rural community on its own currently but I should also mention there's kind of lease financing so it's not the package ‑‑ you wouldn't have to come up with that money upfront essentially once this got to some scale banks, finance companies would support and essentially provide the pack and you would pay over a three year time period so say in the case of the 12,000 you have to have 4,000 and then 4,000 and 4,000 over three years and amortize it over that period or in the case of the fully equipped model that would be 6600 roughly every year to pay for that without having to pay it all upfront. So that's the kind of business model where it's ‑‑ what's interesting to me was how quickly a lease finance company said, yeah, you can send this pack anywhere in Africa and we'll provide the financing for it so you don't have to come up with that money upfront and I said really you would do that and I think Rob on the Zoom could say yeah, they really would which is pretty amazing to me so one aspect mentioned here is okay, what about if something breaks and, again, for being small and portable and going anywhere the whole thing is kind of amazingly robust and reliable from our experience over the last six years. But still if something does go wrong, we've had this actually, in the Ghana case that the cradle point router I mentioned went bad, they sent it back and shipped another one to that remote community in Ghana. Great. The final aspect is life cycle and we're e‑waste which, you know, we've had from discussions in other IGF s with parliamentarians, rural Africa doesn't want to be left with all the junk.
That's something to be thinking about is the ultimate recycling and as equipment wears out and that's kind of beyond the scope of what I'm ready to say about other than to say we recognize that and that can be accounted for as well. I hope that helps and what you were looking for Yusuf.
>> YUSUF ABDUL‑QADIR: Yeah, that was very helpful. We'll take two more of the folks here, so we can bring the conversation to the folks on the floor. We have someone here with here as well who is a major leader in Africa. We've gone from ‑‑ community Africa, to global community internet program. I would be remiss if we didn't mention one of the developers of the software, a gentleman who is himself from the democratic Republic of Congo and then the development that expanded from DRC to Haiti in the spirit that appears to be developed. As a pan‑African and we are constantly looking at the ways to look at interconnectedness across our communities both in the diaspora and in the continent and I'm personally a part of this work because of that long‑term goal. But Kwaku I want to bring you in here because of your policy expertise, given your regulatory and policy expertise I want to bring you in here to talk about the rural communities in particular the agricultural aspects here that I think Dr. McKnight alluded to on that would help deal with the IoT aspects that will help facilitate for the ability for sensors and the regulatory regimes that are necessary to bring it online. Kwaku, can you share with us? And you have to unmute yourself.
>> KWAKU ANTWI: Thanks Yusuf, can you hear me?
>> YUSUF ABDUL‑QADIR: Yes, you're coming in, yes.
>> KWAKU ANTWI: Thank you so much for and thank you for hosting me and I'm glad to be part of the session yes I'm building up on the point in terms of agriculture and the rural IoT and other light services from the previous discussions we've seen that the connectivity is key but another aspect which is key that we are seen so far this is across Africa is in terms of being able to utilize the technology for monitoring and in terms of the produced itself the agriculture produce itself in terms of climate, in terms of temperatures, and in earns the offing ‑‑ in terms of agriculture.
After having produced the agriculture the value chain marketing as well as the agriculture business value chain is one thing which is quite important that is ‑‑ the internet connectivity is pulling. So quite recently most across Africa, we are seeing that not just the traditional agriculture produce itself is being promoted.
But also, the value chain of our business and I know that most African communities where now the social media is prevalent, we see a lot more people marketing the opportunities online through social media applications. As well as through intermediary businesses and also personal requests now but why is this so important? We see that the underlying technologies of internet connectivity of the backpack which is climate compliant as well as community integrative helps the communities themselves to upgrade. As well as the farmers themselves to be in touch with the services. And this helps both the government in terms of the regulatory aspects in being able to help the farmers, to monitor agriculture services, when to apply, and when time is up for veterinary services and to have a cyclical application of updates and this also helps another aspect which is so important.
In the whole ecosystem in terms of data. And not just for the data farmers themselves are able to keep but they are also able to get feedback and even help reset and develop the community. So I think one other aspect that we have always championed is the skills aspect. Farmers are skilled in being able to plant, being able to read, being able to harvest but this comes with the technology of the individual digital skills.
And this is to have information where not just the farmers are able to access but also the communities themselves, other people, to be able to learn. So I think this important aspect in connecting from the planting, from the marketing, from the value chain, not just for individual African countries but also across the continent. Today, I'll give an example in Ghana or in the West African space one of our major consumptions produces tomatoes and we market a lot and especially in Ghana we get most of our tomatoes from neighboring folk. And whenever there are shortages and there are discussions there are people who say you can get it from so and so market or so, so, and so market so in helping the African free trade area that we agreed to in Africa, these are the aspects which bonds the discussions based on the technologies and also boosting from the agriculture and the consumer to broaden the space. Thank you, Yusuf.
>> YUSUF ABDUL‑QADIR: (Audio cutting out). (No audio) these mics, not just to be able to, you know, share their crop or kind of commercialize their product, to trade on global markets, but also to help in data collection and kind of making sure that we're better able to produce more officially, more effectively in a way that's climate resilient I want to bring in our colleague here online who is from the labs. And to kind of share here and add to the discussion and then we'll open it up to the floor for folks to engage in the conversation. We really are a firm believer and in fact our white paper is called digitalizing the grassroots where we're trying to build from the ground up and not the top bottom. We want to make sure we're collaborating and having open dialogue with not just the experts and the folks here but your expertise and making sure we facilitate for that discussion so Poncelet please add to your intervention for this discussion.
>> PONCELET ILETEJI: Thank you very much. One thing I will say good morning, good afternoon, folks. Is I'm part of a network APC.org of which I sit currently on the board one of the things we promote is community networks. I believe in increasing access, what African farmers need is access, you know, to be able to explore the various value chain of that access. We are still very low on broadband connectivity but one way to go about it is creation of community networks and we have not really embraced it well. We have some parts of the continent doing it. We have some other parts of the continent not doing it very properly. We have to operate within the spirit of the this where we are coming together to see how true our universal access policies, whether they exist or they don't exist, our true engagement and broadband providers, we're able to set up community networks, where our rural based farmers can reach a benefit from this community networks. And empower them with digital skills because they need these digital skills to use technology and sell products. We have also seen the impact in mitigating climactic problems. And that is something farmers can benefit if we have the required digital skills. So I am a big advocate of community networks in line with what the association are trying to do with local net. And I would encourage us in our own various communities to try to work within a multistakeholder framework to set up community networks. It is easy saying that okay, there's no broadband here, no broadband there, over 60% of the continent not on broadband but what are we doing about it? We have to bring the community together. Our name means togetherness. So we believe in this togetherness so getting the required digital skills to be able to give it to people. I will give you an example to end with what we did in a rural community. In Gambia in the region. We worked with horticultural women, horticultural farmers to get them online. People were saying they were not educated but they all had smart phones.
We invite ed these women with their daughters and the daughters were helping support them in using social media.
And using online platforms. And with no time, daughters and mothers working together, all these women were able to start selling their digital goods online. All girls are going to school, that is all these girls have mothers most of them working in the rural areas. Thank you very much.
>> YUSUF ABDUL‑QADIR: No, thank you again, why we feel so passionate about the role that internet connectivity can have in achieving the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals and achieving African Union's what we want 2063. It's not going to solve all the problems and all the crises but as an accelerant, as a facilitator it helps to drive there that direction, I promised that I would open the floor we have about half an hour for discussion. I really, really want us to have a discussion, I can continue, I'm a professor so I can probably talk all day long I'd be happy to do that but I think it's most valuable for us to engage in discussion with each other. There's a mic here so please introduce yourself, give a little background of who you are and we'll get into discussion.
>> AUDIENCE: Hey, my name is James, I work on internet resilience research myself I already of your guys' work because I know you guys. Nice to see you Yusuf, Dr. McKnight. I really enjoyed this discussion I had not gotten ‑‑ last year you spoke about the hardware but I didn't get to see it. I actually have a couple questions for Mr. McKnight and one for both of you. What is the watt hour capacity of the battery that powers it is it go live for 40 hours? What's the draw from the antennas and the connectivity itself and from your side of the perspective here, is there much to be done when it comes to teaching these communities themselves how to build battery-based connectivity hardware? I myself work on battery-based connectivity hardware and this has been kind of a question in my mind is how can we not have to always like ship (no audio).
>> YUSUF ABDUL‑QADIR: Before you jump in, I want to answer that question quickly. Our vision is not for us to continue to ‑‑ I love Rob and I love the folks at Encon and they're doing great work oftentimes no profit value for them. This is a technology of the many technologies they offer as a company but really, we do want to have a community development, African based infrastructural capacity building institute.
To be able to build these technologies, to distribute them across the continent to deal with the e‑waste and recycling of that, to develop the capacity, the jobs, the economic viability, the vision is to do in that direction, we're not there yet today, but that is the long‑term, the middle to long‑term vision of what we're trying to endeavor and to achieve. I am not a fan and I don't think any of us are a fan of like the way with which is current global development aid system operates and we're not trying to be a facilitator for that kind of approach. I am going to call a spade a spade I'm not going to jump around it. I can't do anything but (no audio) because we're already rooted in understanding pan‑Africanism and being pan‑Africanist. I'm an African American I'm not here for fun I'm here because I'm committed to the vision of a United States of Africa that's why we're here. And Dr. McKnight is not African descent, maybe then thousand years ago but he is very committed to this work.
Rob and his team are committed to this work and so that is the ‑‑ that is our vision, our vision is to do this, it's why we work with communities in Brazil and trying to bring it there because Brazil has the largest group of people outside the continent. And those in Syracuse and why we are in the places that we are. We're not just doing this to kind of be accelerants of the gaps that exist, we're trying to close them. (No audio). That we are providing a solution that is not going to make you then require us to continue to need us. Like if you can operate a cell phone, you can operate this backpack. The goal for self‑sufficiency for sustainability. Leah talked a lot I'm going to let you respond to the first question he had.
>> LEE MCKNIGHT: First I was trying to ping on Rob for the exact power draw issue.
>> YUSUF ABDUL‑QADIR: While you do that I will let Mary talk
>> LEE MCKNIGHT: I will just let mention the design parameter was eight hours of sunlight you can recharge everything in the pack and I believe that's been met.
So you need to have some sunlight. You can recharge everything and keep going and maintain connectivity. It's not meant to be ‑‑ so basically, it's a power set of devices. There's not a laptop there because they draw so much power that that would throw off the mini microgrid so that's what I will say right now. And if Rob can get on, he can get to the very specifics which I'm not going to remember. It's kind of early here in Upstate New York, thank you.
>> YUSUF ABDUL‑QADIR: As we wait for Rob, mama Mary please, your intention.
>> MARY UDUMA: Yes, the first thing is we are building what we call school on internet, I mean, school on connectivity network, connectivity network. So in that school we train, right, we train on sustainability, we train on technical issues, we train locals to be able to handle the equipment when they have the equipment and when this thing is scaled I know when we get to the scaling point for the time being, you see this is in our continent everywhere and I don't know how many countries have started manufacturing this even if you are going to manufacture the parts they will still have to come from somewhere, those who have skilled and produced it. So is the next step or our future goal is to make sure that the community gets buying into this that understand it, maintain it as long as there are ‑‑ they need the equipment so they don't have to call Dr. Lee to be able to fix the equipment for them. I understand what you're saying and I think that will be implemented in the process, in the use case as time goes by, I don't know what has happened in Ghana, maybe they will share with us, when there was a time to call in Dr. Lee or a producer to come and fix it but the truth is that every African country want to have local content into what we are doing, whatever you bring into our continent, we want to have local content into it. And we have to have technology transfer before we were looking at technology transfer but now we are looking at local content so the community, there's a few that are into this research, there's a few that are techies, this is it and see what's in it, we fix it and see that it is something doable within our continent. Why not? There for the time being, just like the cell phone we're looking at the quick win for digital justice, for our communities so our communities will have internet access, eventually it will get to the point we have raised very good point very, very good for us in our continent something that is beneficial for us something that will not only build capacity but provide jobs for our people and that is what I believe what we have raised is very, very important. And so we go back to the manufacturers. We go back to the facilitators. We go back to those that are interested in bringing connectivity to our country to say, look, we also want local content into this, what is it called? Infrastructure. And into the application, into the maintenance, into the sustainability, financial sustainability and technical sustainability of the process of the program would be of benefit to Africa.
>> YUSUF ABDUL‑QADIR: We'll make sure to connect it to you. Rob, if we can give him a chance to respond and I want to bring in Kwaku again, Rob if you can unmute yourself I think you're good to go.
>> ROB LOUD: I will keep it simple. It runs on low voltage. When it is running we have 16‑20 hours of usage with no problem. So we kind of built it with the idea that it can go all day, figure out a way to recharge whether it be the solar panels, the car charger or if we happen to be somewhere that has power, great, and each of the other devices, whether it be the satellite, the mesh devices and so on. All have their own batteries, so the way that this was built was to essentially have its own microgrid so everything could be running simultaneously and the poll is about three volts when active so it's not a huge draw as compared to, say, a full size Starlink which is running about 42.
Short and sweet it will run 16‑20 hours on a battery load. The one thing that Dr. McKnight didn't hit on the battery that was one of the things we really planned on was that it does have AC and DC power both input and output so depending on where you are at, you cannot only power our devices, you can power other devices with it. For instance we were in a country in Liberia several years ago doing some things and the building that was hosting this ran out of power, so the pack was able to run our equipment, their monitors and computers as well as fans for the room. So it's ‑‑ there was thought put into this. They're making a useful solution, not just a power one device. So like I said, I would give it all day and Dr. Lee also mentioned that most of the newer packs have a double battery design which was done on purpose as opposed to giving one battery a larger charge. This way one battery can be in use and the secondary battery can always be charged. So that way you can have a continuous 24 hour setup if necessary.
>> YUSUF ABDUL‑QADIR: Thank you very much, Rob. Kwaku, you can talk about anything you want but please jump in, Kwaku.
>> KWAKU ANTWI: Thanks, Yusuf, I think the ultimate aim that we have all talked about is one, being able to deploy the device to the community because the benefits are enormous. Two the skills development which my brother talked about that we see is evident that the skills development, even the cascading effect of the skills development is something that is spurred by having the technology itself. And the issue of the local context which is key in Africa is something that we have seen the effects happening. Over the last few years that we've seen the improvement in internet connectivity or the access and also the dual effect of having the applications and also the devices.
We've seen a lot more of African content being uploaded, a lot more African content being used across platforms. Because of the power of internet connectivity. And not just for entertainment purposes but it is cascading across the various industries from the start of the COVID pandemic and this has come in ways which I think if we continue, we'll go. I will give you a good example with the Ghanaian one, this started from a library when Dr. Jane's research started and to ‑‑ we are talking about use cases and also the cascading effect.
What happened was that at a point in time it was being, for safety purposes the device was being taken to a police station, the police ‑‑ the police station also now were able to even operate it, or connect. Then there was a trained institution which was across from where the police station was and they were also talking about internet connectivity and were able to connect to the device. What am I talking about? Having the internet connectivity, we're talking about it all day long but at the end of the day we want to be able to see the device and the connection is there, the content to which we talk about can be both on the local cloud as we are talking about because the internet backpack has the capacity to have a local cloud which we need to connect to the internet but just connect to the local cloud to be able to use it and people will now create content to be able to be accessed. The use cases are so enormous that I mean, at the end of the day, our people will be able to benefit and then that multistakeholder collaboration and all of us who are in the communities who are looking at the grounds up or the grassroots building up will be able to improve internet connectivity and help us. So I think what we are also aiming at totally is that is more of a collaboration, where we are seeing that we complement what is already existing, we are having the various alliances formed, but most importantly, connection to the internet is what is going to drive what we are looking at and we pray for other support that we need to move this forward where in Africa we want the 2063 agenda is able to be achieved and the comments on the African continental trade were able to improve that through connectivity, trade, content, improvement of our communities will be achieved. Thank you, Yusuf.
>> YUSUF ABDUL‑QADIR: Thank you, any other questions from folks in the auditorium? Please.
>> AUDIENCE: I am also working on the research firm. More of a technical question but I was curious the number of unique cell phones that can be kind of a ‑‑ either connecting or passing traffic between each of the packs, and then the gross, I guess traffic like if you hit that max path. Say it's 50 or 100 cell phones like how fast is the traffic per cell phone? Is it 5 megabits per second that each phone can access? Is there anything that can be built or handled on the software side to introduce throttling? Basically understanding a little bit without going too much on the technical details around, yeah, like how many cell phones can be connected, how vast of a connection each cell phone would experience? Thank you.
>> YUSUF ABDUL‑QADIR: Let me add to that question. If Lee and Rob can talk a bit about what it was designed to do and what we're seeing happening in the field because what it is designed to do we passed that substantially. And the research in Ghana shows that
>> LEE MCKNIGHT: Thanks and thanks for the question so the design parameter was we were looking to have 25 simultaneous users and up to 250 devices. In as you just mentioned in the field in Ghana, we were ‑‑ we have records from Dr. Jane's doctoral thesis work of hitting over 35 simultaneous users connecting with, again, adequate bandwidth.
What is the definition of adequate? Can't say. But 35 teachers, we can say were able to connect, were able to do their work. And learn. Together about individual skills in Ghana. Now the throttling you mentioned is kind of ‑‑ we would call it bandwidth management but that's what I'm talking about for the patent is this, what was awarded in 2022. Is this way to sort of actively manage the bandwidth. So more simultaneous users so, again, up to 250 devices, up to 25 people.
And what we experienced is over 25 and Rob, do you have something to add about the question?
>> ROB LOUD: Sure the current modeling with ‑‑ we'll go with if we have a larger amount of bandwidth versus a small satellite. It can handle up to about 120 connections simultaneously. Now when you have one egress point it can go a lot of different ways, what I try to remind people when they're using the internet and I'm sure all of you are aware of this. You know, just because I'm looking at my device and reading a website doesn't mean I'm actively accessing it that second and so what our patent is called the narrow bandwidth utilization. And what we do is allow the traffic to reprioritize, so if we want to make sure e‑mails are the most prominent or a specific website that has that ability and whoever is managing the pack has the ability to set for all those users, say, you want the video feeds to only be at a 7:20 or maybe less as opposed to a high definitely in addition feed so it can allow that. It can take audio and change it from 128 bit down to 64, 32, and that happens up in the cloud on our side. But it allows the pack, the individual user or the pack manager to assign those things to better utilize it. Now, to answer the question what we see, it all depends on the amount of bandwidth available so if you're on the satellite, for instance, you're not going to get the same that you would with an active cellular connection or a Starlink.
But with the star links and the 5G networks we've seen total bandwidth running 200 megabits per second. Per user they were pulling 10‑12, we had multiple current sessions going on at once. It's kind of a large question to answer because it depends on the location of what the ingress point of the internet is. And so that's what we try to do is make sure that that user experience is actually the best that it can be given what access may be available at that particular moment. If that answers it.
>> YUSUF ABDUL‑QADIR: Thank you for that, Rob and Lee and please let me ‑‑ based on Dr. Jane's graduate thesis, I ‑‑ she talked about surpassing the number of devices, what was that number, that thresholds that she surpassed? .
INTERVIEWER: The number of users I know she surpassed.
We were designed to meet 25. That was the original parameter, obviously with Starlink that went further but she had 35 users.
When we talk about sensor networks we expect it to connect up to 250 devices simultaneously for ‑‑ which is ‑‑ we haven't actually hit that number in the feel for real think I, right Rob? Just yet. But in principle if you're talking about a low bandwidth, sensor network connectivity for agricultural use it could be hundreds of farmers. Many hundreds of farmers could be connected simultaneously within a community. So we haven't hit that parameter yet because we haven't that use case come into it but we can do it.
>> ROB LOUD: For the use of what we're talking about in this discussion for agriculture, we do have models of the backpack that enable the traffic for IoT sensors to work much better.
We built the backpack with the initial idea of what it was for and I will compare to it the iPad we never knew what people would use it for we see it used for telemedicine, agriculture, education, rescue work, a great example was a couple months ago when we had a hurricane hit here in the U.S.
Up in the mountains, there was no communications, roads were washed out, so nobody could get there the cellular mobile companies couldn't get there so rescue workers that were on mules took our pack up into the mountains and allowed people not only to have internet access we were able to create a micro cell so even though there was no power, no cellular signal in this area because we were connecting via Starlink at that moment.
We were able to provide internet but also everybody within that area where we were was able to connect their cell phones as well as make text messages, so that is one of the things that I really love about this pack is it's not just a static idea or a static product. It's ever evolving and we always try our best to modify it or build a pack that's specific to what somebody needs because what Lee may need or Kwaku may be completely different.
We do have a variation that has a small, I will call a computer server in it, and this goes back to the bandwidth question. In educational situations we have partners who build the web interface and they build it off the server that then feeds all of the children for their education, all the different grades, collects the information and once a day can upload it to the ministry of education so they can run it through that you are systems for grading this, that and the other so there's lots of ways to make the bandwidth work really well it's not just managing it. It's can we do things at the local level to create content there based upon the use case that makes the use of that bandwidth even more affordable in the long run.
>> YUSUF ABDUL‑QADIR: Thank you very much. I will give mama Mary the last word. You have about one minute and then we'll close.
>> MARY UDUMA: The great thing here is that for everybody specify what you want to use it for. And there it will be for you. So we are hoping that the developers would also put into context why scaling up our peculiar needs in our environment. If it is an emergency let it be emergency. If it's education let it serve education. If it's telehealth let it serve telehealth. And if it is agriculture let the agriculture side benefit what it provides. Thank you.
>> YUSUF ABDUL‑QADIR: Thank you, I want to give everyone here a round of applause. Please clap for yourselves. Excuse me, I would like to thank our speakers and the folks who engage in interventions. You see them in the program and I want to thank all of them for doing so. I want to thank Wisdom for bringing this panel together and thank the IGF Secretariat for allowing us to have this conversation and welcoming us back to IGF for the fourth year in a row and the kingdom of Saudi Arabia and this beautiful transformation they're in and it's something to behold and witness and it's fascinating to watch it live and I would remiss if I didn't invite you to join us. We cannot continue to do this work if we don't collectively build the grassroots if you go to AGCIP.org, Africaglobalcommunityprogram.org you'll be able to see our work contribute to our work.
We need to build this together. In the African tradition it is central to who we are. And very much deeply embedded in the philosophy of the work that we do. In the spirit, please join us, it is essential that we all work together to make this happen. The internet that we want the future that we want, the Africa that we want, will not happen if we don't work together to build it without further ado, thank you very much and we'll close the session.