Day: March 5, 2023

DOHA, QATAR — Only a third of people in the world’s poorest countries can connect to the internet, the U.N. telecoms agency said Sunday, but low-flying satellites could bring hope to millions, especially in remote corners of Africa.

Tech giants including Microsoft have pledged to help populations hobbled by poor internet services to “leapfrog” into an era of online connectivity, with satellites set to play a key role as rival firms send thousands of new generation transmitters into low level orbit.

At the moment just 36% of the 1.25 billion people in the world’s 46 poorest countries can plug into the internet, the International Telecommunication Union said. By comparison, more than 90 percent have access in the European Union.

The ITU condemned the “staggering international connectivity gap” that it said had widened over the past decade.

The divide has been a key complaint at a U.N. summit of Least Developed Countries in Doha, where UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told their leaders that “you are being left behind in the digital revolution.”

The digital dearth is particularly acute in some African countries, including the Democratic Republic of Congo, where barely a quarter of the population of nearly 100 million can connect.

While internet access is easy in major DRC cities such as Kinshasa, huge rural zones and swathes of territory battled over by rival rebel groups for more than two decades are digital deserts.

The launch of thousands of Low-Earth Orbit satellites could bring speedy change and boost African hopes, tech experts promised at the Doha summit.

‘Leapfrog other nations’

Satellite coverage will play a key role in Microsoft’s vow to bring internet access to 100 million Africans by 2025, which was outlined ahead of the summit.

Microsoft announced a first phase for five million Africans in December and last week added a commitment to cover another 20 million people.

The initial five million will be served by Viasat, one of the companies sending constellations of satellites into space to compete with land-based fibre broadband.

Elon Musk’s Space X and Starlink are also putting thousands of satellites into an orbit between 400 and 700 kilometers (250 to 430 miles) above Earth.

Microsoft president Brad Smith told AFP that when he first saw the 20 million figure proposed by his team last year, he asked “is this real?”, but that he was now convinced it is possible.

“The technology costs have come down substantially and will continue to drop,” he said. “That is part of what makes it possible to move this fast to reach this size of population.

“Countries in Africa have the opportunity to leapfrog other nations when it comes to the regulatory structure for something like wireless communications,” he added.

“We can reach many more people than we could with fixed line technologies five or 10 or 15 years ago.”

Bandwidth bonanza

Richer countries have already largely allocated the available bandwidth for telecoms and television.

“In Africa the spectrum isn’t being used and so it is available and the governments are moving faster to bring this connectivity to more people,” Smith said.

Microsoft is working with Africa telecoms specialist Liquid Intelligent Technologies to provide internet for the second segment of 20 million people.

Providing internet and digital skills training for thousands of Africans was part of an effort to provide a private-sector alternative to “foreign aid”, Smith said, declaring that “we are bullish on what we believe digital technology can do for development.”

But the Microsoft president acknowledged that the private sector is “woefully under-developed and under-invested” in many LDC economies.

Liquid Intelligent says it has 100,000 kilometers (62,000 miles) of land fibre across Africa but is building a major satellite footprint.

“In hard-to-reach areas,” said Nic Rudnick, its deputy chief executive, “satellite is often the only technology or the most reliable technology for fast broadband that always works.”

Source: Voice of America

CAIRO — Egypt’s President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi held talks Sunday with Iraq’s prime minister in Cairo as the two countries seek to deepen ties and reinforce a regional alliance with Jordan.

Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani landed in the Egyptian capital and was greeted at the airport by his counterpart, Mustafa Madbouly. Al-Sudani and Madbouly inspected an honor guard and bands played the national anthems of the two countries.

The Iraqi premier then met with el-Sissi at the presidential palace. Their talks focused on economic cooperation and security ties between the two countries, according to Egyptian presidential spokesman Ahmed Fahmy.

Fahmy said in a statement that the two leaders also discussed regional issues, including their cooperation with Jordan. The statement did not elaborate. Foreign and trade ministers from both countries attended the talks, Fahmy said.

The trip marked al-Sudani’s first to Cairo since his Cabinet was approved by the Iraqi parliament in October, ending a yearlong political stalemate. Al-Sudani’s predecessor, former Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi, had forged a close relationship with el-Sissi and King Abdullah II of Jordan.

El-Sissi traveled to Baghdad in June 2021, becoming the first Egyptian head of state to visit Iraq since the 1990s, when ties between the two countries were severed after Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait.

Egypt, Iraq and Jordan have intensified their ties, with their leaders holding five summits since 2019, most recently at the Dead Sea in Jordan in December to discuss implementing strategic projects. Those include building gas pipelines between Iraq and Egypt through Jordan, and an industrial city on the Iraq-Jordan border, Egypt’s state-run Al-Ahram daily reported Sunday.

Al-Kadhimi has also sought to strengthen his country’s standing in the Middle East as a mediator capable of bringing even the staunchest of foes to the negotiating table. Baghdad recently hosted talks between Iran and Saudi Arabia that were focused on mending ties between the two regional foes, and on the war in Yemen.

Source: Voice of America

China announced Sunday a 7.2% increase in its defense budget for the coming year, up slightly from last year’s 7.1% rate of increase.

That marks the eighth consecutive year of single-digit percentage point increases in what is now the world’s second-largest military budget. The 2023 figure was given as 1.55 trillion yuan ($224 billion), roughly double the figure from 2013.

Along with the world’s biggest standing army, China has the world’s largest navy and recently launched its third aircraft carrier. According to the U.S., it also has the largest aviation force in the Indo-Pacific, with more than half of its fighter planes consisting of fourth or fifth generation models.

China also boasts a massive stockpile of missiles, along with stealth aircraft, bombers capable of delivering nuclear weapons, advanced surface ships and nuclear-powered submarines.

The 2-million-member People’s Liberation Army is the military wing of the ruling Communist Party, commanded by a party commission led by president and party leader Xi Jinping.

In his report Sunday to the annual session of China’s rubber-stamp parliament, Premier Li Keqiang said that over the past year, “We remained committed to the Party’s absolute leadership over the people’s armed forces.”

“The people’s armed forces intensified efforts to enhance their political loyalty, to strengthen themselves through reform, scientific and technological advances, and personnel training, and to practice law-based governance,” Li said.

Li touched on what he called several “major achievements” in national defense and military development that have made the PLA a “more modernized and capable fighting force.”

He offered no details but cited the armed forces’ contributions to border defense, maritime rights protection, counterterrorism and stability maintenance, disaster rescue and relief, the escorting of merchant ships and China’s draconian “zero-COVID” strategy that entailed lockdowns, quarantines and other coercive measures.

“We should consolidate and enhance integration of national strategies and strategic capabilities and step-up capacity building in science, technology and industries related to national defense.” That includes promoting “mutual support between civilian sectors and the military,” he said.

China spent 1.7% of GDP on its military in 2021, according to the World Bank, while the U.S., with its massive overseas obligations, spent a relatively high 3.5%.

Although no longer increasing at the double-digit annual percentage rates of past decades, China’s defense spending has remained relatively high despite skyrocketing levels of government debt and an economy that grew last year at its second-lowest level in at least four decades.

Li set a growth target of “around 5%” in his address, as he announced plans for a consumer-led revival of the economy still struggling to shake off the effects of “zero-COVID.”

While the government says most of the spending increases will go toward improving welfare for troops, the PLA has greatly expanded its overseas presence in recent years.

China has already established one foreign military base in the Horn of Africa nation of Djibouti and is refurbishing Cambodia’s Ream Naval Base that could give it at least a semi-permanent presence on the Gulf of Thailand facing the disputed South China Sea.

The modernization effort has prompted concerns among the U.S. and its allies, particularly over Taiwan, the self-governing island democracy that China claims as its territory to be brought under its control by force if necessary.

That has prompted a steady flow of weapons sales to the island from the U.S., including ground systems, air defense missiles and F-16 fighters. Taiwan itself recently extended mandatory military service from four months to one year and has been revitalizing its own defense industries, including building submarines for the first time.

In his remarks about Taiwan, Li said the government had followed the party’s “overall policy for the new era on resolving the Taiwan question and resolutely fought against separatism and countered interference.”

Along with Taiwan, tensions have been rising with the U.S. over China’s militarization of islands in the South China Sea, which it claims virtually in its entirety, and most recently, the shooting down of a suspected Chinese spy balloon over the U.S. east coast.

The huge capacity of China’s defense industry and Russia’s massive expenditures of artillery shells and other materiel in its war on Ukraine have raised concerns in the U.S. and elsewhere that Beijing may provide Moscow with military assistance.

Source: Voice of America