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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>> YUSUF ABDUL‑QADIR: Good morning. Welcome to our conversation here today, which we're going to be launching the Africa Community Internet Program. My name is Yusuf Abdul‑Qadir. I'm an adjunct faculty at Syracuse University, and I have an amazing set of folks here today, in person and online.
Last night, we opened up our conversations here at the UN Internet Governance Forum in Kyoto, and thank you to the people of Japan and the government of Japan for inviting us and welcoming us to Japan. Arigato. Last night's conversation was situated and oriented around making sure we leave no one behind. It is essential that as we consider the expansion of the Internet and think through how we're going to ensure inclusion, that we are keen and clear to leave no one behind.
The folks here today are going to be talking a bit about community networks and how we can both manifest the realization of an open, inclusive Internet and making sure that the availability of what we have all referred to as the information highway is accessible and that technology's being one of the key advantages to making networks available is helpful to advance these issues.
We've got a number of folks in the room and online, so we're going to begin today in multi approaches. First, we're going to have some presentations and case studies from Dr. Lee McKnight and graduate student, doctoral student Jane Appiah‑Okyere. And then we'll have a discussion with folks here and online. We're going to begin with Dr. McKnight.
>> LEE McKNIGHT: Thank you, Yusuf. Thank you to Japan, our hosts, and all of you here in the room and online for joining us for this important discussion. The Africa Community Internet Program was introduced in 2022 at the Addis Ababa IGF in Ethiopia last year, and we have made progress with our partners. I am a professor at Syracuse University, as is my colleague, Professor Smith, there. And we have been working with the Africa Open Data and Internet Research Foundation to launch the Africa Community Internet Program. Next slide, please. I should do it. Back one. Let's see. Here we are.
Okay. So, why are we here? It's because over, well, around 2.6 billion people do not have access to the Internet in 2023. We've in the last year, in 2022, we moved the dial 100 million people. We can go faster. We can do better than that. Go back. Okay, I'm sorry.
We can do that. It's actually not that hard. In fact, right here in the room is something that could connect 2.6 billion people, if it was just distributed around the world, without any new infrastructure. It's called the Internet backpack. It powers community networks. And folks here in the room are welcome to check us out at the Africa Community Internet Program booth in the exhibit hall after this panel, but it really is as simple as one, two, three, one, two, three, connect, and you're online, from everywhere except the North and South Poles. And we don't ‑‑ and people ‑‑ we don't need experts to go into any of these communities, people, Internet backpack operators are people in the community that if they know how to run a smartphone, they can figure this out.
We've launched, as I mentioned, the program in 2022. We have now increased dialogue with 16, 17, 18 African nations, in cooperation with the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, African Union, African Telecommunications Union, many non‑profits, increasingly several firms and government agencies, in both Africa, the U.S., and elsewhere. And our hope and intent is to have at least some initial dialogue with all African Union member nations by the time of the G20 summit in 2025. This is not an imported innovation. The key software that is patented in 2022 is really an intention of a really brilliant guy in the Democratic Republic of Congo that's been working on this for six years, along with several of us at Syracuse University and elsewhere, and from ENCOM International, which is not the point of this presentation.
The point of this presentation is to say we can do this. It is not rocket science. This is from Jane Coffin, saying, this is not rocket science! We can build community networks! We can do this. Now we try to make it simpler and easier and faster to at least get started with a little Internet. That's with the African Community Internet Program, is part of the African and Global Internet Community Program. We say everyone deserves least ACIP of Internet. So that's how you say it, "a sip" of Internet. We'd go faster and better if governments cooperated. And we have recommendations. We have a white paper that is being released here online for the first time that has been shared, again, with UN agencies and governments for quite some time over the past year since we initiated this last year.
Again, Internet Society and governments have begun to have people fill the gap for productivity themselves without barriers in place favoring the incumbent carriers. We think this can all be done and we can get going immediately. And there really isn't an excuse not to do it, and I'll stop on that note. Thank you.
>> YUSUF ABDUL‑QADIR: We're now going to go to doctoral student Jane Appiah‑Okyere.
>> JANE APPIAH‑OKYERE: Thank you. Yeah, so, it's always good to think about what legacy we, the older adults, are leaving behind for the younger generation behind us, especially the ones in rural areas. Kids born in rural areas did not decide to be born over there, but they are born over there, and there's nothing we can do about it. All we can do is to help them to be able to grow up and become citizens that can produce, citizens that can help.
And so, my research that I'm doing, it's about providing Internet connectivity in rural areas, and it's in Ghana. We first train teachers so that the teachers can train the kids. And when we did the research, we had teachers come to a library where, as Dr. McKnight said, we have the Internet backpack that you see over there. We put it in that rural area where they don't have any Internet connectivity. We turn it on, set it up, and there was Internet access for the teacher professional development that we did. We trained the teachers. And now, three or four months from ‑‑ I mean, last year, the teachers have been using the Internet. And guess what? The numbers that we have as now the children are the ones coming to the library. Now, if the Internet backpack was not provided, was not there to provide Internet access, yes, the kids would come to the library to read books, but they would not be able to research and find other resources online.
Some of the teachers were very happy because they are able to download videos because their classrooms, they don't have electricity, let alone Internet. And so, they download videos, take it to their classrooms, and show it to the kids, and then give the kids assignments, and the kids will come to the library, do the research, and present whatever they've learned. And they are seeing amazing improvement in the children's education.
We also looked at ‑‑ I also looked at the gender aspect of it. When the Internet backpack or Internet access was provided, we saw that a lot of girls were using the Internet as it's supposed to be, and not that the boys were not, but the girls were really there. But as time progresses, we saw that the girls were not always there, but the boys were using the Internet, which is something that we hope to investigate more and find out what is preventing our girls from using the Internet.
Another aspect that we saw was the social connection of having the Internet in the centralized location in the community. The community had five schools, and these five schools all come to the library. And so, when we did the teacher professional development, the teachers were able to come together ‑‑ private school teachers, public school teachers ‑‑ come together and find out that, oh, we have somebody who knows more about the Internet. Let's be friends so that we can come together, learn, and sometimes invite you to come to my classroom and teach my kids. So, we see that the social connection that having these resources in the library brought is really helping the teachers. It's bringing them together to train our kids. And also, the kids are learning, are able to perform exercises that the teachers found that it was difficult for the kids to research and work on.
And so, we see a big impact in providing access to the Internet to rural communities or rural and underserved communities, whereby there's no infrastructure and there's no way that our governments are going to be able to build these infrastructures all the way. And just picking up the backpack, taking it to that rural area made a big impact in this research, and I'm pretty sure that if we are able to, as Dr. McKnight said, distribute the backpack where they don't have Internet, these kids that are born there will be able to participate in the digital environment. Thank you.
>> YUSUF ABDUL‑QADIR: Okay. So, now that we've kind of laid the floor into how we're going to approach the conversation, I want to set a few key discussion points for those who will be here with us today, those of us in the audience, and those who will be joining us online.
There are three thematic areas that we're going to try to situate our conversation in. We've got limited time, but we want to try to make sure to get you all the best access to information as possible.
First, the solution to rural community infrastructure and electricity. Two, bridging the digital skills gap and expanding training needs. And three, why funding for community networks and sustainable energy is necessary. So, the panelists here will try to address those three topical areas as we kind of continue our discussion here. For those who are in the room, please do not hesitate to come to the mics. There are two in the room, if you have any questions. We want to have a dialogue with you as supposed to a lecture. Many of us are academics, so we're used to those kinds of conversations, but we're actually here trying to build a conversation and build a collective, cohesive group of folks trying to expand Internet access to communities that don't have access. So, if you do have questions, please don't hesitate. Go to the mic. We'll make sure to bring you into the discussion.
To kick us off here, Dr. McKnight. I think it's kind of important for us to orient the conversation in, not just ensure that no one's left behind, which is key and essential, but how the backpack's design itself tries to facilitate for that. Can you talk a bit about the backpack's design and the way that you've thought through ensuring access to Internet, access to electricity and beyond?
>> LEE McKNIGHT: Sure. Thank you for that, Yusuf. So, when we call the Internet backpack a connectivity tool, we're only talking about part of the pack. It's also a very small microgrid, a solar‑powered microgrid with a solar panel that's foldable and a battery, with eight hours of sunlight, you can sort of recharge all the electronics in the pack and keep going. So, sustainable connectivity off grid. If, of course, you can plug it into a utility grid, great, then you can recharge everything faster. If you have a car battery that you can plug it into, that's also fine. But by design, we do not assume you have access to any source of electricity, so that this can keep people connected indefinitely anywhere, with or without access to a grid. Obviously, it'd be better if you did have access, if you did have access to reliable electricity from another source, but this is by design does not make that assumption. It assumes maybe you need it, maybe you don't.
Another aspect is how do you connect? You could connect by Wi‑Fi. That would be nice, right? We like Wi‑Fi. We all do. It's cheap, fast, unlicensed spectrum, pretty good service. You're all on it right now. If you don't have that, 4G, 5G, that can be really fast off the pack, and that we have designed so that by design we're assuming up to about 25 people, up to 250 devices can be connected off one pack. We're not guaranteeing that they can all get recharged. We can recharge what comes with the pack overnight. But still, 25 people, simultaneous users. So, this is simultaneous, not like total. Jane's numbers exceed the professor's guidelines, but that's actually ‑‑ that shows ‑‑ and with still decent performance. So, again, this is a sip of Internet, not a gigabit of a person guaranteed from fibre, but you get some Internet from it.
So, to summarize, it's a microgrid. It's a connectivity tool. Oh, I forgot to mention satellite. In case you can't connect to 4G or 5G, and you can't connect to Wi‑Fi, there's a satellite Internet capacity built in. Currently, we're using BGAN. That will be swapped out to another solution in the next upgrade, I understand from the manufacturer.
Oh, and if you can't do any of that and you really wanted to connect, we have like a mesh networking for sending emergency communication signals to somebody within the next two, four, five, or ten kilometres away. So, in sum, the whole design is, like, one way or another, you have energy; one way or another, you can connect; and everybody can connect everywhere with that one little pack, except the North and South Pole, just because of Inmarsat satellites.
Anyway, so, that's the design. It's a complex, complete little system with a careful energy balance to make it sustainable indefinitely with or without access to the energy grid.
>> YUSUF ABDUL‑QADIR: Jane Coffin, you have a storied career, respected in this space. And I want to give you an opportunity to talk with us a bit about the way that community networks ‑‑ we talked a bit about that last night, but for those who weren't here ‑‑ the way that community networks can kind of expand access and try to build this infrastructure. Jane comes to us as a Senior Executive on International Infrastructure and Internet Issues. So, Jane, please.
>> JANE COFFIN: Yes, thank you very much. And thank you to our host, the government of Japan and colleagues in Japan. It's a pleasure to be here today. Community networks are a way to help build out middle mile, last mile connectivity, sometimes first mile, it depends on the type of community network. The proof that community networks are working is the great work that you see APC, the Internet Society, organizations like yours, FCDO, GIZ funding, other organizations, understanding that traditional forms of connectivity have not connected many of our communities in urban, rural, remote, unserved, and underserved areas.
Being specific about urban as well, if you go to Nairobi, you will find that in very strong urban settings, you find POA there, a small ISP that's doing amazing work; you find Community Network there from Tuna Banda. They've changed the name and I can't remember the name. Carlos may remember. He's in the room. But community networks are a way for the community out to build infrastructure. And I'm going to focus on a word that I hope you remember ‑‑ local‑local training, which means training local people to train local people for sustainability. We're not talking about people jetting in to just leave and not leave the training behind.
Digital skills are so important, something I think we've all found when we're doing work with communities. Whether it's the Rise American, Ultramunde, you have lots of community networks like Zenzeleni, Tuna Bande and others, and they're doing great work. It's about that training, whether it's technical training. Afchex is a term women in a group gave themselves when they were part of a network operator group, the NOGs. If you haven't heard about them, ask me later. They are very important for technical training and this is a women's group training each other in a comfortable setting. So, you get the key technical training that goes on, the community development training, which is equally important from a digital skills perspective, and local, grant‑making training is super important. Anyone who's done this work can tell you, you've got to go out and find that funding.
The key thing is there are ways to talk to investors as well to get that funding into your community. It's largely about ensuring them that you're going to help them de-risk their investment, whether it's philanthropic funding, capital coming from commercial entities and banks and others, but there are ways to do this, and I would like to posit that we can decolonialize funding, and we can do this and create more funds. I know there are some folks who are thinking of setting up more funds in sub‑Saharan for connectivity. I won't get into all of that right now because I think some of them are still in progress. But if you also look at the UN Giga Project with ITU and UNICEF, they're trying very hard to focus on how to bring more funding and funds into Sub‑Saharan Africa and around the world later, but to build out these community networks. But if you've not heard of them before, come talk to the people here on the podium, Carlos who's in the audience here, and some others. The folks at KICTANet are running around. I think they can also help. Josephine, (?) who also works in Nairobi on many projects, the lead for APC in Africa on the community networks work. And I know that Ultramunde is here as well, from Latin America, mostly Argentina doing work. And I think Rise America also, but anyway. It's important that you're talking to regulators and policymakers as well.
As Dr. Lee mentioned, there is something called spectrum, which is very important if you're trying to put a network together, and you need to ensure that you talk to your regulators and policymakers if you're trying to use licensed spectrum, but the Wi‑Fi networks are generally using that unlicensed spectrum in 2.45, sometimes 6 gigahertz, which are geeky things you don't need to remember. Just remember that if that's not unlicensed in the country you're working in, you need to learn how to talk to regulators about using that spectrum, but in many countries, it is unlicensed. You need to talk to people who know about this from the technical perspective and there are many out there. Again, I mentioned some of them earlier. I'll turn it back.
>> YUSUF ABDUL‑QADIR: That's amazing Jane and transitions perfectly to our colleague, Kwaku Antwi, who is with the Africa Open Data and Internet Research Foundation. You're here with us online? I believe you are.
>> KWAKU ANTWI: I'm right here, Yusuf. Hello, everybody.
>> YUSUF ABDUL‑QADIR: It's as if the voice of God has come to us in the room. Always good to hear from you, Kwaku. If you talk about how AODIRF is trying to engage regulators, members of parliament and communities. We often talk about digitalizing the grassroots, it's title of the white paper, but why is it important to build this from the grassroots up?
>> KWAKU ANTWI: Thank you. Jane, good to have you on board. Big steps to follow. But anyway, thank you very much.
Basically, it's important that we empower the people with the skill set to be able to set up just like the backpack was easy to set up, but most importantly, to engage the policymakers who make the laws, who are able to authorize the use of the equipment according to the regulations, according to the set rules, and most importantly also to engage the policymakers from the parliament to be able to transition their thinking and also aligning with the lawmaking so that it's easier to transition our technologies.
Community networks are something which are kind of a new phenomenon, but it's quite easy to understand the concept. I think Jane Coffin just broke it down a bit for us. But we're empowering the people to be able to be empowered to be more sustainable, okay? So, once we have the networks in place, we believe that the skill sets, the innovation is to stay in the community. If the innovation stays in the community, we need to have laws or regulators who also understand that this is a bit different from the big telecommunications networks or the ISPs who are on a higher level, who require big capital.
Most of our communities that we are looking to digitalize are the grassroots communities, also have to be able to be connected and I believe Jane's research and other deployed parts in Costa Rica and across the world, where the community and the backpack has been deployed shows us that, one, the people themselves in the rural communities need to be skilled enough; our regulators need to be able to do ‑‑ and that's what Africa Open Data and Internet Research Foundation is doing across Africa. We have a network of original regulators as well as policymakers and the IGF space, the network of other Internet connection organizations, that we strengthen ourselves, meet regularly, and also share our experience where we're able to improve the network and make sure that our grassroots communities are digitalized, skilled, and also knowledgeable about the policies and regulations, who are able to improve it for their own benefit from the bottom up. Thank you.
>> YUSUF ABDUL‑QADIR: Awesome. So, we are really excited about the opportunity to both engage in conversation and dialogue, but to do something special here today. Last year, we introduced the world to this concept of the Internet backpack. Actually, Dr. Smith, if you would be as kind as to raise your hand. Dr. Smith is here in the audience. You'll see the Internet backpack to the left of her, so if folks in the room are interested in coming, you can see it; you can engage with it; you can touch it; you can feel it.
But we're this year going to try to launch another opportunity to connect with our website. So, as Dr. McKnight mentioned, the website is a CIP, but for those who may not be able to spell that, it's AGCIP.org. Please take a moment to go to the website, for those of us joining around the world, online, and those in person. You can check out the website and we'll be happy to put it on the screen in a moment or two.
For the last few moments that we have, I want to make sure that if there are any questions in the audience, and if there aren't, I want to try to round us out with a few key points about the importance of both engaging in discussion ‑‑ oh, we have a lovely person here in the audience who has a question.
>> AUDIENCE: Good morning. Yeah.
>> YUSUF ABDUL‑QADIR: Good morning.
>> AUDIENCE: I'm Christine from Uganda. I work with the Uganda Communications Commission regulator there. I have a couple of questions, one of them on the sustainability angle. From our experience in the universal service access programme that we ran, when you supply IT equipment and all, when it reaches its end of life, the communities look back and say, "Where do we take it?" So, how is this project catering for that aspect of sustainability, e‑waste?
The other is to do with ‑‑ interact with full design of backpacks, so you'll excuse me if it's already catered for. But nevertheless, I'll ask. Operation and maintenance cost and support. Usually, also, that comes in, in terms of the communities. The technical support to actually, in case there's a failure with a backpack, who is going to handle it, and is that catered for in that training, away from the usage?
Lastly, ownership. We have seen that ownership of products by the communities, not only the beneficiaries, but also the communities associated with the beneficiaries, sort of helps garner the support and social importance and significance of such, beyond this was a donation which was brought, it's only a few identified people in our community, but the way that others can also come around it. So, how has that been factored in? Thank you.
>> YUSUF ABDUL‑QADIR: Amazing questions. Doctor, I'll hand that over to you.
>> LEE McKNIGHT: Those are excellent questions and we don't claim to have answers to all of them, but we'll take them in part.
First on sustainability, there is a very large firm which I cannot name yet that we're in discussion with around issues of e‑waste, recycling, and life cycle management of the pack and beyond, because there is a pack, and once you have the pack, you might also want to have some laptops or other phones, so again, that's under discussion but not something that I can say, I can pretend we have a solution to right now, but we recognise that's important going forward.
Second part is ‑‑ well, actually, the first part ‑‑ for the pack itself, from last year's discussions in Addis Ababa, there was strong support for having the pack come with a full warranty. So, essentially, there's always ‑‑ if it's a warranty, you can just sort of send it back, right, to the manufacturer, and then under U.S. law, they would have the e‑waste responsibilities for it. That was one.
Internet backpack operator? Like, who's actually managing this and how much training is needed? Well, I showed one slide with, like, one, two, three, one, two, three. We also have ‑‑ we have five, like, two‑minute videos in English and Spanish. That is really all you need to do to train an Internet backpack operator. And an Internet backpack operator is some member of the community who is either ‑‑ well, we went into Costa Rica, so we recognise, like, somebody has to own this and take responsibility for it, for the community, so they don't technically own it, but from a technical point of view, who's responsible for it? Who's trying to make sure it's safe and secure? And who's the best skilled at operating it?
So, when Professor Smith and I went into a rural community in Costa Rica, I think now two years ago? I was very curious, like, how did they decide who was the Internet backpack operator, you know? What was special about him? And the answer was, he lived next to the school. Okay, so, he's like, gets the spillover from the Wi‑Fi signal, covered the school, give it to him, and he was a member of like the local community board of some sort, but he didn't have any special skills. So, again, literally, if you can operate a smartphone, you can operate the Internet backpack. You can learn more and do more.
Offering further training and support for higher levels of management, beyond just being, like, the local Internet backpack operator ‑‑ this is really a cloud‑to‑edge solution, so you're managing multiple different cloud services and designating things. That gets more complicated, true.
We have been working closely with the Internet Society. Jane was too modest to admit, like, really it's her nudges along the way ‑‑ before there was even one Internet backpack, we were talking, Jane and I, before the first one was ever deployed, to Democratic Republic of Congo. Since then, every step of the way, we've been interacting with Internet Society, local communities per country. So, we would expect the Internet Society in that country to be part of, like, the back‑stopping technical support.
Similarly, ICANN. Similarly, NRIs. And then there is, of course, locals. So, essentially ‑‑ anyway, so, we don't have a magic solution per country. It would be something where the Uganda ISOC community would have to sort of step up a little bit to help provide solutions.
Remote support. Syracuse University students are really good and have been helping. Literally, you don't need anybody in the country. This is what I was saying. This is so simple. We've just deployed into 20 countries where there aren't anybody from the manufacturer; there's nobody from Syracuse University there. We get access on the Internet. We coach them, debug it. So, it's designed to be that easy, that you do not need that level of expertise, unless you're trying to do these higher-level things.
I'm trying to remember... There probably were a couple more questions there, but that's where I should probably stop rambling.
>> AUDIENCE: Hello, I'm (?) from DW Akademie. It sounds like a good solution, like one fits for all. And taking a look from another side, when we talk about co‑creation and community‑centered design and where you sit together with persons and design solutions, maybe you would come up with more than one backpack, so to speak, and they could look different and they could be also owned by the community. So, my question is a bit, manufacturing. Is this also like, is it a decentralized approach behind it? Because like as I understand, shipping devices can make up to 80% of the cost in some cases, and then there's also the question if some component is broken, in some countries, they might not be available and it would be maybe better to build up the technical solution, also like locally in this sense to see what are local manufacturers of help labs or who could be involved, yeah, in this kind of thinking. Thank you.
>> YUSUF ABDUL‑QADIR: Super question. I'm going to take my moderator hat off for a moment and put on the participant hat and then put it back on and go to Dr. McKnight.
You know, the intention has always been for this not to be oriented by what people in the West, kind of coming onto the continent are saying, "You need better. Here you go." We're really not oriented around that. To be extremely explicit, this was designed by a brilliant person from the Democratic Republic of Congo and innovated by a person from Haiti. So, at its core, this has been a Pan‑African movement of sorts that has been collaborative across multiple communities.
The vision has always been to try to bring the backpack, the technology, to the continent to help communities start themselves up to be the manufacturers, the distributors, et cetera. We're not really interested in trying to export and do it in that way. We're really interested in trying to build an ecosystem where communities can be self‑sufficient and sustaining. Because there were two questions that our colleague from Uganda asked with respect to sustainability. The environmental sustainability side, which I think Dr. McKnight talked about, as well as the sustainability for the ability of communities to maintain the technology and grow without others coming from the outside, if I understood your question fully.
And so, we've been very intentional. I think that's why we talk about digitalizing the grassroots and why we're talking about engaging with communities and building upwards, as opposed to going from the top down. We're being extremely prudent in making sure that we are being cognizant of the need, even though there could be opportunities to launch this in 55 countries tomorrow, we want to be very keen on not losing sight of that.
Dr. McKnight, if you want to add anything that I may have missed.
>> LEE McKNIGHT: (Muted) Sorry. There's actually ‑‑ again, we're not here selling the pack, but it does come in different versions. One is called the light version. That comes without the satellite, which makes it much, much cheaper than the version with the satellite. Second, with the pack itself, it's possible to connect, like, anything else. This is part of the dialogue from the beginning with the Internet Society, that this is, you know, not a closed system. It's like, connect your storage, connect your whatever it is into this, and boom, it's part of your pack. You can add on whatever you want to it. It provides this sustainable connectivity, sustainable energy, little box.
I promised Jane years ago ‑‑ I haven't forgotten ‑‑ that sooner or later there would be an open source version with open source hardware, and it's really hard to do that. There is a patent on the software part that is patented last year. The manufacturer has had. That's just the reality of the world that we're in. But still, the design itself is modular, simple, and can be added on in any way anybody wishes. There is nothing to stop people from adding in more content, more devices, other configurations.
>> AUDIENCE: Hello. Can you hear me?
>> YUSUF ABDUL‑QADIR: Yes, we can.
>> AUDIENCE: So, can you connect ‑‑ is there a server?
>> LEE McKNIGHT: Why do you need a server?
>> AUDIENCE: I'm wondering what the community means ‑‑ like email server, for example. Suppose the connection is weak. Suppose like I want to send an email. I mean, start from there. But the idea of a community is all about how you are a community together. And I can give you ten reasons, but I just want to mention email relay server, yeah.
>> LEE McKNIGHT: Like I said, if you want an email server, you can add one. This is a cloud‑to‑edge connection, so there's a router. There is a battery. There is a solar panel. That's the core. There's ‑‑ anyway, those are the core components. You can add anything else you wish. If you wish to have a separate router, that's optional, up to you.
>> AUDIENCE: Has anybody added in this ‑‑ has anybody added a server until now?
>> LEE McKNIGHT: There have been servers added, but the basic design doesn't really require that. But you can do that.
>> YUSUF ABDUL‑QADIR: Another question.
>> AUDIENCE: Hi. Thank you. My name is Carlo Le Moreno from (?) communications. Thank you very much for the presentation. We've been advocating and supporting community networks for many years now with Jane and we thought it was amazing to see more people advocating and working and trying to build the skills, the capacity, and working with more communities around the world, and in particular, in Africa.
I think while listening to you, there are some ideas that are coming to my mind, especially in relation to the funding or the financing of these initiatives that are related to at the end of the day, the economic sustainability. I mean, we've been talking about the social sustainability, the technical sustainability, environmental sustainability, which are all important. But in relation to, for instance, looking at Universal Service Funds, as I think Jane has a session tomorrow on that, or Wednesday? I've lost track of what day is today. I'm sorry.
And the financial sustainability's important, on funding, you need to have some sort of a business model, an organization behind it so there is some sort of compliance and whatnot behind it in order to unpack either USF or finance from, you know, investors that might be interested in doing that. And one of the biggest ‑‑ I really like the solution and I'm looking forward to spend more time with you during these days and understanding the setup, because there is a rebirth, an entire rebirth of community centres that require connectivity that are owned by the community, kind of not the telecentre model that the governments were kind of topping down into the community, you know, like more top‑down approaches that are not working and a rebirth of that movement and Internet ‑‑ you know, like Internet connectivity solutions like that one could work.
But then also the issue of the OpEx. I mean, at the end of the day, for the entire thing that I just mentioned, and then you would require a license to be able to sell Internet, so you know, it has like many elements. But then the OpEx in itself is very complicated. I mean, we've been working for the last year or so in Nigeria with some of our colleagues there on the element. Even though they have their community centres from the government, there is no Internet service provider whatsoever, with cost affordable for the community to maintain. They have to pay a recurring cost of the OpEx, no?
And yeah, I was wondering whether, I don't know, you are mentioning that you have a partnership with Inmarsat that's been merged with Bearsad, which has a partnership with Microsoft that is offering a potential opportunity to partner, whether you have considered that. Sorry, many things, but happy to talk more.
>> YUSUF ABDUL‑QADIR: Thank you. Let's give you one minute to respond. Sorry, is that Kwaku on the line?
>> KWAKU ANTWI: Yes, yes, yes. Thank you. So, nice seeing you, Carlos. Kwaku here. Yeah. So, basically, the whole reason is that we have this African Community Internet Program, Carlos, and it would be good for us to have more conversations about it and including the business models as we have incorporated in the programme. Yes, there are a lot of developments going on, and it would be good for us to continue this conversation and also for us to, you know, tighten these aspects in conversations very much. And you are very much welcome and the team is available, both online and onsite in Kyoto. So, let's keep the conversations going, yeah. Thank you.
>> YUSUF ABDUL‑QADIR: I'll close us out by saying thank you all for being here. Carlos, to your question, we have a white paper that talks about the use and the importance of Universal Service Funds, and we can connect with you afterwards to try to elaborate further.
For those of you who were here with us in Kyoto, thank you so much for joining us. We want to give you a round of applause and give yourselves a round of applause, please. Don't be too shy, but clap for yourselves for being here. For those who joined us virtually, thank you for coming. We want to make sure we leave this conversation with you being able to access our website for more information, contacting us, and engaging in the conversation. AGCIP.org.
We want to thank Kwaku Antwi, Director of Programmes and Research from the Africa Open Data and Internet Research Foundation, Jane Coffin, who is a Senior Executive for International Infrastructure and Internet Issues, Jane Appiah‑Okyere, who is a Doctoral Candidate at Syracuse University School of Information Studies, Dr. Lee McKnight, who is an Associate Professor at the Syracuse University School of Information Studies, the people of Japan, and the United Nations Internet Governance Forum.
And please, do not hesitate to find our booth. We are right next to the Kimotos. Thank you for coming. And with that, we will end the discussion.
(Applause)