Pocket Cyber Cafe: Internet for Education

As the Broadband Commission for Sustainable Development puts it, the challenge is “to help teachers and students use technology ... in relevant and authentic ways that improve education and foster the knowledge and skills necessary for lifelong learning.” Many factors, however, inhibit the full achievement of these gains:
- Lack of access is first and foremost among these. Access to the Internet, with sufficient bandwidth, is essential for the development of an information society. Lack of broadband connectivity is preventing widespread use of the Internet in education and other areas of life in many countries.
In today’s digital age, the internet is a norm in many people’s lives, as nearly 4.66 billion active internet users exist worldwide. People use the internet for communication, research, gaming, and e-commerce. Yet, most citizens of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) have no access whatsoever to the internet. Only about 20 million people out of 100 million people living in the DRC have access to the internet. However, changes are occurring in the DRC. Small ISPs are deploying on small scale to cover the gap between rural and urban cities through Wi-Fi hotspots.
- A legal and regulatory environment that fosters investment and innovation is critical to enabling broadband access. This is not just a matter of connectivity. Government policies on censorship and high Wi-Fi costs ensure that the Congolese have no access to the internet. The government passed a censorship policy in 2002, called law No.013/2002, which has the power to control telecommunications in the DRC. It grants the government the power to control telecommunications to defend the public or in the interest of national security. If telecommunication companies don’t comply with this law, they risk getting their operating licenses terminated. This forces
many ISPs to shut off the internet.
Due to the manipulation of this law, the Democratic Republic of Congo has cut off the internet, text-messaging services, and social media services multiple times such as Facebook, YouTube, and WhatsApp to stifle civil and peaceful protests occurring in the country. In addition, the country is suffering economically as it is losing $2 million every day due to the termination of internet services.
- Affordability: For access to be meaningful, it must also be affordable for
schools and individuals, and teachers and students must acquire digital literacy and other skills required to make the best use of it.
Buying one gigabyte of mobile broadband data in the DRC costs a staggering 26% of monthly income. This makes the DRC the most expensive country to get access to the internet in the world because there are no rules regulating caps on internet prices.
Additionally, customers bear the burden of high taxes on telecommunication companies. These reasons allow telecommunication companies to raise prices to an extreme.
- Lack of relevant local content- Those teachers and students also need to find and use locally relevant content.
- Inclusion The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development aims to ‘ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all.’ [x] If the Internet is to contribute effectively to this, access must be available at all levels of education, in both formal and informal learning. Some communities are better equipped than others to take advantage of the Internet because infrastructure is more available
or more affordable to them because they have better access to Internet-enabled devices, or because they have economic or social advantages. The World Bank has warned that new resources in education, including ICTs in schools, can exacerbate ‘entrenched inequities’ unless care is taken to ensure inclusion. The risk of this can and should be mitigated through policy and practice. 

Pocket Cyber Café: Internet for education is proposing the deployment of an internet hotspot in the city of Goma with a targeted number of 45,600 households under coverage and a total number of 228,000 people under coverage. We intend to introduce the PAY AS YOU GO service for all our CPEs (Customer Premises Equipment) to allow easy access for our customers to subscribe and get connected to the internet. The solution will help expand the internet to schools, hospitals, public places, restaurants, and farmer’s markets to make it accessible and affordable. A total of 3 relays will be installed for better internet coverage and CPEs connectivity.  
New approach

Pocket Cyber Café previously focused on delivering affordable internet in rural areas for educational purposes and within educational institutions.
With the new approach, we would like to extend our reach to health institutions, farmers, small businesses, and educational institutions. The goal is to increase the availability and affordability of the internet in those mentioned sectors as part of the SDGs’ goal. Also make information
available for nurses and doctors, farmers, and small businesses, therefore, allowing them to get useful information in their field. By doing so, Pocket Cyber Café will help build a well-informed community that will boost the economy by making sustainable decisions in each sector.

Pay as you go approach
An estimated 2.9 billion people around the world still do not have access to the Internet. The acquisition cost for a typical personal computer has not been affordable and accessible for many kids and parents. The upfront cost has stopped many parents to acquire personal computers for home use for continuous learning off school for their kids. The elevated risks of
mobile phones have not made it the ideal choice for devices used by many for educational purposes for kids.
Certainly, many constraints exist, including funding for equipment, lack of trained teachers, and lack of time during the school day to teach CS given other curricular priorities. One potentially
a promising way to overcome resource constraints is to make computers affordable and accessible through the PAY AS YOU GO financing model.
Lack of personal computers has made it difficult for households to adopt home internet service and allow kids to access learning materials while at home because the mobile phone is considered dangerous for kids underage. That is why we adopted the Pay as go approach to
deliver “Solar powered and connected computers” to 1million homes by 2030. It is our goal to give more people a simple way to pay
and acquire the personal home computer for educational purposes, securely and fairly, and to develop innovative, affordable options to help people meet their basic needs.
The process will consist of acquiring a personal PAY AS YOU GO computer, which the customer will pay over months while also accessing the Internet.

Findings
Despite gains in internet access over the last several years, the region lags behind the rest of the world in internet usage. A Pew survey of six African countries finds that internet usage is high among youth, which is good news for schools as it will help them teach 21st-century skills;
however, the study also finds that internet users tend to be male and have higher incomes and more education, meaning that more needs to be done to ensure all young people, no matter their gender or socioeconomic status, develop skills that enable their future success.  

Pocket Cyber Café (Goma) is expected to deliver internet in most of the public areas, schools,
farmer’s markets, hospitals etc.
A total of:

- 500 homes will get access to Solar Connected Home Computer for Kids education.
- 1 main tower built and installed
- 3 relays will be installed within the city for better coverage
- 3 main public hospitals will be connected
- 2 Farmer’s market will be equipped with wi-fi hotspot
- 3 secondary schools will be equipped with a computer lab and wi-fi hotspot
- 5 universities will be connected and serve approximately 500 students daily with reliable
and affordable internet service 

We are a team of talented women and men with many years of Wireless deployments, VSAT installations, and projects implementations.

We believe to have what it takes to executed and make this project a success.

Our team has run several market surveys to understand the needs of our customers and the constraints that stop them from acquiring a personal computer for continuous Education beyond school and possible reasons behind the lack of Internet as one of the tools to improve quality Education.

The findings are what is driving the implementation of the Pocket Cyber Cafe project not only in Goma but with a vision to expand in 3 major cities in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. 

We are applying to Solve to get access to tools, funds, and training to advance this solution and probably expand it and reach our goal of 1million houses connected by 2030.

What makes Pocket Cyber Cyber Café innovative is the incorporation of solar-connected home computers under the Pay-as-you-Go approach on both Internet service and Hardware acquisition.

We are solving more than one SDGs issue under one kit " solar-connected Home Computer for Education"

User will solve the following problems:

- Access to clean energy: Solar light
- Access to affordable Home Internet
- Access to a personal computer
- Access to the most up to date Educational content on the internet

Pocket Cyber cafe's ultimate goal is to:

- Make the internet affordable and accessible for Educational purposes
- Connected 1million homes to the internet through the distribution of solar-connected Home computers by 2030 under pay-as-you-go financing model
- Make accessible up to date educational content for continuous education for kids in underserved communities
- Make information widely accessible for both parents and kids in the comfort of their homes.

We measure the impact of our progress by:

- the number of connected homes
- The number of kids who have improved their school grade after the acquisition of solar connected home computers
- The number of new skills developed by underserved kids beyond school curricular program

Our school curricular program today does not teach practical skills to kids. Having access to a connected computer at home and having access to an uninterrupted source of energy will definitely increase creativity and research skills which leads to the discovery of new techniques and methods in Agriculture, business, work, education to name among a few; which in return will have a positive impact in each kid's professional and social life.

The technology we use is mostly pay-as-you-go technology along with a cloud-based voucher system for an Internet subscription.

All of these are connected by unlicensed wireless radios. 

Girls and women often have less access to technology and the internet compared to boys and men. Particularly in many African countries, girls and women struggle to afford technology and internet access. In addition, stereotypes around technology being "for boys" and fear of being discriminated against stop girls from using digital tools. 

We intend to hire more female IT personnel and increase access to a personal computer to female school kids by 65% versus 45% to male kids by 2030.

We sell solar-connected Computers to the underserved community for educational purposes under PayGo financing model to help households get access to both Home computers and the Internet affordably.

We lease out CPEs (Customer Premises Equipment) for as little as 1 dollar per week to cover the lifetime of the product while giving access to Educational resources over the Internet.

We estimate to grow our business to 500K revenue in a period of 5 years after launch. This is due to the strategies to roll out personal home computers both to schools and homes.

The customer needs this product and service because it solved their problems related to access to quality Education, Access to educational content which is free to access over the Internet, and clean energy access.

We intend to sustain our business from the sales channel and raise some money from external funders (Grants, loans).

With increased sales, we can easily sustain the business.

We have partnered with Microsoft on this project to connect schools and connect households to the Internet for educational purposes. This partnership will help us provide connectivity for the 3 biggest hospitals in the city of Goma, connect 3 farmers' markets, 5 universities, and other small businesses and individuals.

The second part of the project is to distribute personal/home computers for parents who would like to extend learning beyond the school's compound.

The PAYGO model is very sustainable due to the fact that the upfront cost is bearable and more accommodating for the majority of our targeted customers.

This will make the business sustainable within a couple of years after launch.