IT News Africa features Myriad Connect’s Fabien Delanaud on Extending the Internet in Africa

Myriad Connect’s GM, Fabien Delanaud, was invited by IT News Africa to speak about ‘Connecting web-based services to people without the internet’.

With recent research from the International Telecommunication Union showing that 3.9 billion people globally do not have access to the internet, Delanaud discusses what this means for Africa.

Delanaud reveals that:  “75% of Africans are offline; a startling figure given the explosive growth of mobile across the continent. The challenge for Africa, and for South Africa in particular, is lack of access to data and, or internet-enabled smartphones.”

He continues to explain that “technology already extensively used throughout Africa today, could be the answer to helping drive digital transformation in Africa.”

The technology, unstructured supplementary data’s (USSD), core benefit is that it doesn’t require mobile internet data coverage to operate. USSD enables transfer of data between mobile devices and a network, which makes it an ideal technology to help provide digital mobile services to billions of people in the developing world, where network coverage is at its most basic, or data is too costly.

For more on the potential of USSD technology and how it may help enable further digital transformation in Africa, read the whole article here.