This is Pipeline, a thriving, densely packed Nairobi neighbourhood 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.
Thanks to local residents like Elias and some radical new technology from further afield,
more and more people are getting online.
The internet has altered life beyond recognition for its 5.4 billion current users.
It has democratised information and produced staggering fortunes, 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 five years another billion people will
be online, here in Kenya and across the developing world.
I'm Professor Hannah 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 who have the most to gain.
It all began with a very well-intentioned vision.
In the late 1980s when Tim Berners-Lee was inventing the World Wide 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 goldmine, 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 collaboration, it's the
collection of pages, the stuff that is stored in vast data centres 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 online.
Finding a creative solution has long been an ambition of Google's notoriously secretive
research arm called X, the Moonshot Factory.
Here they spent nine years trying to build a global network of giant stratospheric internet
beaming balloons, before scrapping the project and bringing their ideas back down a little
closer to earth.
In the most basic terms possible, what on earth are you building?
What on earth we're building here is a technology that can use beams of light to transfer high
speed internet data.
Mahesh Krishnaswamy is the technical lead for Google's most recent attempt to bring
high speed internet to the farthest flung corners of the earth.
OK, talk me through it then, how does it work?
So what you have here is a simple TARA terminal, this is one end, and you need two of these
in order to make a link.
You're able to use the data that's coming in from a fibre optic cable and transfer it
into light energy and transmit it wirelessly.
So it's just like fibre, but you don't have to lay any fibre in between.
To avoid the difficulty and expense of putting ever more fibre into the ground, they fixed
TARA 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.
OK.
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 metres 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 TARA 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 the cell
tower, to make sure that it's all centred.
Oh, so the beam is live right now, is it?
The beam is live.
So what do you do?
Yeah, just block it.
You'll see it.
So look there too.
As you block it, you see all the things that are scattered.
And the mirror is having to adjust really dramatically.
Yeah.
It's working its way around my hand, is it?
Exactly.
It's working its way around 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 kilometres.
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.
Yes.
Across 20 kilometres.
That is correct.
And you're expecting it to hit the target perfectly.
That's right.
Absolutely extraordinary.
Yes.
And it works.
It's out there working.
It's out there.
We are currently talking about speeds of tens of thousands of megabits 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 Astro Teller explains, not the 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 other advantages to this for 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 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 technology?
Now, welcome to my humble palace.
It's a barbershop, the same time, electronics, yeah, even shoes.
I do sell shoes, but right now I've eaten the stock.
You're an entrepreneur.
Yeah, 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 neighbours' attention.
When I was using it, my friend came and told me,
can you supply me to my house?
And I was like, yeah, I can try.
So you took your internet, split it off.
Now we are sharing.
I added another person.
Now those two people are paying for my internet.
Yeah.
So I continue and say, let me add again.
Let me add again.
So I have one, two, three, four, five, six.
So all of these are going up to the 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 dollars,
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.
Yes.
Google only discovered this kind of local enterprise
when the number of connections in Pipeline vastly outstripped contracts sold.
But instead of cracking down,
they realised 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.
Yeah.
Some 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 they've sort of run out of customers everywhere else.
What do you think about that?
OK, first of all, as a company, to install internet around such a place,
the one who say, oh, they are trying to get customers, well and good.
It's a source of business.
As an entrepreneur, tick, 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.
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 sceptical.
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 centres 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 centre.
Dr Judy Makira was born and grew up here.
And now with her colleague, Dr Eunice Owino,
has come back to support local people
that lack the basic skills and opportunities to get online.
Here in Kauru, the child goes to the coffee farm in the morning,
in the evening, tea farm, then milking the cow.
The difference is worlds apart.
When you just bring 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, they 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 Eunice founded
the Centre 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 programmes running here.
We have the general digital skills, word processing, Excel.
And then internet, how do you get into 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?
Yeah, jobs online.
Content writing, transcription.
You can see they look different because now they are exposed
and they are earning some money.
Oh, really?
Yes.
They look different.
What is it, like what 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.
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 centres like this to help ensure the positives reach everyone.
Digital technologies is the way to go.
So congratulations.
The Kenyan government has recognised the potential
that technology offers its population
and are 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...
Few months.
Few months, yeah. Let's say maybe five months-ish.
Shortly after graduating from university,
Mojez Oyenge 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 know if people in general realise 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
and know what is right and what is wrong.
And was it very traumatic?
For me, I'd say it was very traumatic.
Even up to date, there are some videos that are still lingering on my mind.
I'm still struggling with the PTSD, the insomnia.
I came to view society as a totally different...
Like you peeked inside the inner lives of people
in a way that the rest of us haven't.
Yeah. Content moderators are 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, I'd say, the morality and the sanity
of people who are using those platforms.
For such an important job, Mojez 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, Mojez says the role comes without appropriate psychological support.
It's raised accusations of a kind of digital colonialism,
big tech companies extracting online labour 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 who work in this industry,
and the only solution that can make both the multinational companies
and their outsourcing firms to listen is with the power of unity.
Alongside the fledgling African content moderators union,
Mojez 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.
This time, we're saying, no, we are going to build solutions
for not just ourselves, but also for the other markets.
Irene Kuiya is one of the founders of Adenian Labs,
a company that wants to grow African wealth
by investing in a new generation of tech talent and innovation.
We have trained one of the largest amounts 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, Hannah, 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 Afia Record to power 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 are 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 it's a very secure platform, yes.
Amazing. I'm very impressed.
The team here are 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 that 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 country.
Wealth creation being a very key thing.
We need to really prepare our youth so that they are ready
to not just solve for 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,
it's 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 it 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.