CAPE TOWN - A Kenyan tech company BRCK, on Thursday, called on organisations to work together in connecting billions of Africans to the internet, which would lead to an increased global domestic product (GDP).
Nivi Sharma, managing director at BRCK -- a company which operates at the forefront of rolling out free internet connection across the continent -- said the company was aiming at connect one billion Africans to the internet so that $1 trillion can be added to the global GDP and create extra millions of jobs on the continent.
“We want to connect one billion Africans to the internet so that we could add one trillion dollars to the global GDP and we could create extra 70 million jobs on the continent, that’s my guess and I’m pretty confident that’s true,” said Sharma on Thursday during her presentation at AfricaCom.
AfricaCom is the continent's largest technology, media, and telecommunications event which has seen thousands of delegates from across the globe gathering at the Cape Town International Convention Centre (CTICC).
According to Sharma, companies and organisations needed to collaborate and work together in order to achieve spreading that connectivity throughout the continent.
“We can’t do this alone, there is not one organisation in this entire conference that can connect Africa to the internet, we are playing a small part of it, we are trying this out in Nairobi and rural Kenya, but we need partners,” she said.
“We need power to run our systems, preferable renewable power. We need to partner with organisations that wanna get digital literacy training to people. We need to partner with people who can create content that’s beneficial, point people in the right direction on how to access financial services, education and healthcare content online.”
At the event last year, the company showed off its free public wi-fi platform known as moja which connects the public into the internet, with a specific focus to rural areas.