this is pipeline, a thriving, densely packed Nairobi neighborhood bustling with hawkers, young families, and traders. This is where you grew up. Yeah, I was raised in this place. There are no public schools here, there's limited access to running water, and no rubbish collection. But there is one service you can get. There's stalls that are selling like brand new smartphones. Yeah, thanks to local residents like Elias and some radical new technology from further afield, more and more people are getting [Music] online. The internet has altered life beyond recognition for its 5.4 billion current users. It has democratized information and produced staggering fortune while also emboldening some of the worst aspects of humanity, a breeding ground for abuse and exploitation. As the tech world expands its digital frontier in 5 years, another billion people will be online here in Kenya and across the developing world. I'm Professor Hann Fry, mathematician and writer. I want to know how the internet revolution will unfold for the next billion online and whether it's big tech.

or users you have the most to [Music] game. It all began with a very well-intentioned vision in the late 1980s when Tim Berners-Lee was inventing the worldwide web. He said he wanted it to be an open platform that would allow everyone everywhere to share information, access opportunities, and collaborate across geographic and cultural boundaries. And to be fair, that is sort of what the web became, except that some 35 years on, there are still three billion people on Earth who are not online. And that is a fact that has not gone unnoticed by people in Silicon Valley. For the internet giants, our attention has become a virtual gold mine, which means that they see the people who are not yet online across Asia, the Middle East, and Africa as a vast untapped resource. The challenge is getting them connected. I know that people use the words web and internet interchangeably, but they are actually different things. The web, that's the bit that you see on your screen, it's the collection of pages, the stuff that is stored in vast data.

centers owned by companies like Google and Amazon. The internet, however, that is the physical infrastructure. It's the network of cables running over land and along the seafloor that literally link up one machine to another, carrying huge volumes of data encoded in pulses of light. Now, no one company or government owns the internet. It's like an organically growing beast. But, of course, someone has to pay to create those connections, and for the last bit, that last mile where the connections are the most numerous, the economics can be harder to stack up, especially in remote locations. So, building that last mile needs creative solutions. If you're in the business of getting more people [Music] online, finding a creative solution has long been an ambition of Google, notoriously secretive research arm called X, the moonshot factory. Here, they spent 9 years trying to build a global network of giant stratospheric internet-beaming balloons before scrapping the projects and bringing their ideas back down a little closer to Earth. In the most basic terms possible, yeah, what on Earth are you

building what on Earth we building building here is a technology that can use beams of light to transfer high-speed internet data. Mahesh Christnas Armi is the technical lead for Google's most recent attempt to bring high-speed internet to the farthest-flung corners of the earth. Okay, talk me through it then. How does it work? So, um, what you have here is a simple power terminal. This is one end, um, and you need two of these in order to make a link. We're able to use the data that's coming in from fiber optic cable and transfer it into light energy and transmit it wirelessly. So, it's just like fiber, yeah, but you don't have to lay any fiber in between. To avoid the difficulty and expense of putting ever more fiber into the ground, they fix two terminals onto cell towers and have them communicate using incredibly narrow invisible beams of light, demonstrated here with a laser pointer and this very fetching hat. You are going to be a cell tower, sure, okay. On top of you is one of our terminals. So

your goal is to basically stand on this little wall and try and target that. It's one thing for me to hit the bullseye from just a few meters away. Oh my God, in real life, this is exactly how much the cell towers move as well. Wind and temperature changes cause havoc for cell towers. So, to compensate, inside each T terminal, there is a set of mirrors to constantly fine-tune their aim. What you see here is the movement of the mirror that is happening in order to make sure that it is all centered. Oh, so the beam is live right now, is it? The beam is live. So, why don't you, yeah, just block it? You'll see it. So, now, but look there too as you block it. You see all the things that a SC, yeah, and the mirror is having to adjust really dramatically. It's working its way around my hand, is it? Exactly. It's working on your hand. Clever. This ability to stay on target is vital if you want to beam internet over huge distances in the real world. How far

apart do these sit when they're out there typically. I know most of our links we have deployed are somewhere between 10 to 20 km, so that is pretty far. I mean, what you're doing is crazy. You're shining this laser beam that's like the width of a chopstick across 20 km, and you're expecting it to hit the target perfectly. That's right. Absolutely extraordinary. It is. And so, and it works. It's out there working. It's out there. We're currently talking about speeds of tens of thousands megab per second. The fact that we can deliver very high speeds, low latency connections at a very affordable price, that's the most Game Changer out of all of these things. This is one of Google's moonshots that does work. Mahesh's boss, Astr, explains not skates, but why they've invested so much in bringing the world online. This isn't like Google doing this out of the goodness of their hearts alone, right? There are advantages to this, the Google everyone.

here at X understands that we're trying to exist at the intersection of purpose and profit. I believe that there's plenty of ways we can make the world a radically better place and use the fact that those things can be enduring businesses, that the profit actually enables that goodness to scale to the whole world. There are things that would be really good for the world but are just going to lose money forever. That's not how we want to spend our [Music] time. Turning a profit while making the world a better place is a laudable aim, but what does it mean for the people at the other end of the [Music] technology? Now welcome to my humble pal. This is a barber shop, the time Electronics. Yeah, even shoes. I do sell shoes, but right now I've eaten the stock. You're an entrepreneur. Hey, I'm an entrepreneur. In 2021, Elias Mugo borrowed cash from a friend to hook up to one of Google's Tara connections recently installed on a cell tower a few blocks away, and it quickly got the neighbors

attention when I was using it. There's my friend came and told me, Can you supply me to my house? And I was like, I can try. Well, so you took your internet, split it off, you're getting now, we are sharing. I added another person, now those two people are paying for my internet. Yeah, yeah. So I continue, I say, Let me add again, let me add again. So I have 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. So all of these are going up to flats upstairs, yes. So how much do you make now for all of these? For all of these, around 10,000. That's amazing. 10,000 Kenyan Shillings or around $75 US is a healthy additional income here, and all from sharing one internet connection many times at a low price. Every single person is also getting their internet cheaper than they would if they went straight. You're a very clever man. I'm trying. Yeah. Is Google only discovered this kind of local enterprise when the number of connections in the pipeline vastly out.

stripped contract sold, but instead of cracking down, they realized local residents are much better placed to connect people. Now, Elias and others like him have become official internet resellers. What does it mean to a place like Pipeline to get the internet here? It will be a source of business to somebody like me and a means of information. There are people who study, people who go online classes, so it is helping them, yeah, like access to education, yeah, access to education because accessing education is far from this place. There are some people who say that the big tech companies who are installing internet in places like this, that they're trying to basically get more customers because sort of run out of customers everywhere else. What do you think about that? Okay, first of all, as a company to install internet around such a place, the one who is saying, Oh, they're trying to get customers, well and good, it's a business as an entrepreneur. I agree with that because it will help me grow. At the same time, I've helped you to grow. It's a great

thing [Music]. Yeah, this place feels very, very, very, very far away from that Google X lab. This is where I think that you see the genuine impact that the internet can have on people's lives, not just in terms of access to information, access to the outside world, but also the business opportunity that it actually presents, not just for people in Silicon Valley but for people here too. The fact that the internet coming in here then gets split off into 30 different directions is just the best evidence of that. When we left California, I was still maybe a tiny bit skeptical. Having been here genuinely, I think this is a win-win for everybody. Google's Optical internet is now rolling out across pilot sites in Africa and India, but the opportunities that the internet brings to urban centers like pipeline aren't guaranteed to automatically benefit everyone in Kenya. 70% of the population live in far more remote areas where the internet is a long way away from being part of daily life, and there are different challenges to it becoming so. Welcome to our

Cent Dr. Judy McKa was born and grew up here, and now, with her colleague Dr. Unice Aino, has come back to support local people that lack the basic skills and opportunities to get online. Here in Curo, the child goes to the coffee farm in the morning, in the evening tea farm, then milking the cow. You know, the difference is world apart when you just bring the internet and dump it here without trainings and some basic skills on how to navigate. They cannot do it. I mean, this is quite a rural area, right? Is that how people feel? Yes, and they are not happy. They actually feel like they were left out. There's something really interesting in that, I think. The internet, where we are now, it's infiltrating in the basic life of every person, but the rural people have never seen that. In 2017, Judy and Unis founded the Center for Women's Empowerment in Technology to make sure that youth, and particularly girls, don't miss out on the potential benefits of internet access. We

have like three different programs running here. We have the general digital skills, word processing, Excel, and then internet. Internet is actually the last topic. This isn't just about browsing; this is bringing the global marketplace to these kids and inviting them to actively participate. We have quite a number of them who are now earning jobs online. We have jobs online, content writing, transcription. You can see they look different because now they are exposed and they are earning some money. Oh really, they look different. What is in like they're wearing or like confidence? Even confidence. They have more authority. So when they come with stories of their success stories, they motivate the ones that are currently going on. And then in here we have for the current class, it's graduation day. Graduating is not the end; this is a beginning. So this is where your digital life begins. These are the places where jobs and access to high-quality education are scarce, that perhaps have the most to gain from coming online. But it will require more than internet beaming laser

devices you need centers like this to help ensure the positives reach everyone. Digital Technologies is the way to go, so congratulations. Thank you [Applause]. Yeah, the Kenyan government has recognized the potential that technology offers its population and is investing heavily in its fledgling digital sector, even building a new tech hub from the ground up. And so, with high-speed internet access and a young population hungry for work and opportunities, Kenya is an attractive place for global companies to outsource online jobs. I got the job in April, so that's a few months, a few months, yeah, let's say maybe five months, yeah, yeah, just months. Shortly after graduating from university, Moes Oang was employed as a content moderator. He describes his job as watching hours of incredibly disturbing videos every day to protect the rest of us from the nightmare of seeing them. I don't, I don't know if people in general realize that content moderation involves people like you physically sitting down in front of a computer and watching stuff for every platform like

human beings need to be there because it's human beings who can properly detect, you know, and know what is right and what is wrong. And was it very traumatic for me? I'd say, um, it was very traumatic, uh, even up to dat. There are some videos that, um, I'm still lingering on my mind, you know. I'm still struggling with, you know, the PTSD, the insomnia. I came to view society as a totally different, you know, like you peaked inside the inner lives of people in a way that the rest of us haven't. Yeah, C moderators were basically the First Responders. I equate them to like people who go to war, you know, to defend a country. So, as you're defending the, uh, I'd say the morality and the sanity of people who are using that, uh, uh, platforms for such an important job. Moer says he was paid $200 a month, less than half the average income in Kenya, and nine times less than content moderators earn in the US. And here, Mo says the role comes without appropriate psychological support. It's raised accusations of a

kind of digital colonialism. Big tech companies extracting online labor for minimal cost. How do you square that circle then if you have to have humans doing this? We had a meeting of over 250 moderators based here, and then we just sat down, shared our working experiences. But at the end of the day, we sat down and decided, you know what, for us to move forward, we need to have a union for ourselves. We know the challenges that we face as people working in this industry, and the only solution that can make both the multinational companies and their outsourcing farms to listen is with the power of unity. Alongside the fledgling African content moderators union, Moz is pushing for better pay conditions and a recognition that without their work, our shared online spaces would quickly become unusable. I think the thing about the internet is that it's obviously the very good stuff, but we don't want to see the bad stuff, and I think it's very easy to just ignore the invisible work that's going on behind the scenes that in order

for you to have a safe, polished, glossy experience, you have to have people exposed to the worst horrors of humanity. I mean, that's the price that has to be paid by somebody. I just, I'm not sure I feel comfortable about them being paid $50 a week for doing so. As the internet continues to be rolled out across the world, jobs like this in an ever-growing digital sector will be created, but the biggest profits will continue to be amassed by giant tech companies far from places like Kenya, unless local companies can enter the game. And that is what a team of tech experts based here in Nairobi aims to do. [Music] This time, we're saying no. We are going to build solutions for not just ourselves, but also for the other market. Irene Kia is one of the founders of Adenan Labs, a company that wants to grow African wealth by investing in a new generation of tech talent and innovation. We have trained the largest amount of data scientists in

Eastern and central Africa. But also, we do a lot of R&D. We have built solutions for healthcare, financial services, agriculture, logistics, education. We don't have legacy infrastructure, so we're able to really innovate. The historic lack of public services here has one upside; it means that much more modern solutions have space to grow. If I ask you today, Hana, where are your health records, frankly, I mean, they should all be in the same place, but where are they? No idea, exactly. One of our flagship products is AIA Record to empower patients with a platform where they can store, manage, and access their health information. We had to map out the full healthcare journey: hospitals, pharmacies, diagnostic centers, and all that. And then we built a portal for all of that so that we can really power an industry, and it's all linked to individual patients. How many people are using it? We currently have around 150 hospitals across Africa, which is around 350,000 patients, and we're scaling it not just here in Africa but also in

Europe and in the US, and interestingly, it's built on the blockchain, you know, so um, it's a very secure platform. Yes, amazing, very impressed. The team here is solving local problems, but they still have a global market in their sights, you know. Africa being quite behind in the digital revolution compared to other places is sort of a challenge, but in a way, the way you're describing it is though it's this giant opportunity, massive opportunity, massive opportunity in so many ways, because we need technology that is going to take us to somewhere where we can really change the narrative of this continent. Wealth creation being a very key thing, we need to really prepare our youth so that they are ready to not just over the continent but support the world, you know. So that's our vision. I think before I started making this film, there was something that sat a bit uncomfortably about big tech companies coming into sub-Saharan Africa in order to find new customers. This is a place that has historically been very

exploited, and I still think that's a legitimate concern, but I also think that this is a place that is completely fizzing with entrepreneurs and enterprise. And I think for those people, having the internet is not about inviting the rest of the world in; it's about sparking and igniting and accelerating local solutions, local growth, and hopefully local companies that will, in turn, go out to affect the rest of the world. Tim Berners-Lee, I think he got absolutely right when he said that the internet isn't about connecting machines; it's about connecting people. Because I think if you have another billion people online, that's not just going to affect them; it's going to affect all of us. [Music]

A Billion More People Are About to Transform the Internet | The Future With Hannah Fry

Bloomberg Originals offers bold takes for curious minds on today’s biggest topics. Hosted by experts covering stories you haven’t seen and viewpoints you haven’t heard, you’ll discover cinematic, data-led shows that investigate the intersection of business and culture. Exploring every angle of climate change, technology, finance, sports and beyond, Bloomberg Originals is business as you’ve never seen it.
