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TOR177 — The mSTAR project with Troy Etulain of FHI360

Troy Etulain

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If you’re an ideas person, no matter what your field or expertise, there is nothing I can think of that is more attractive than a clear, tangible problem in need of a solution. As much as we hate to admit it in the social sector, these types of problems are not terribly common and they are almost never the lowest hanging fruit in a given situation. But in those instances where clear problems in need of solutions are identified, the next most attractive thing to an innovator is funding to play with. I mean that in the most generous way of course, given that, at the end of the day, we don’t just want to play, we want to find answers. As I think you’ll agree after listening to today’s 177th episode of the Terms of Reference Podcast, my guest, Troy Etulain, has a job that seems quite a bit more play than work. He’s the project director of FHI360s Mobile Solutions Technical Assistance and Research project, or mSTAR for short, and he’s also the head of FHI’s digital development unit. While again, Troy doesn’t just have funding to play with, he does oversee a mechanism that is built to identify clear problems and then take action to find potential solutions. We talk about wifi that covers 50 kilometers, financial technologies that are increasing inclusion, the new business models that are driving rural mobile network development, mapping the unconnected areas of the world… and much more. You can connect with Troy here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/troy-etulain-1564111/

IN TOR 177YOU’LL LEARN ABOUT

  • The challenge of Digital Inclusion, which defines the magnitude of several A&D subjects, from education, financial access and connectivity
  • The mSTAR project, an innovative approach to try innovative approaches in bridging the many Digital Inclusion gaps: geographical, social and gender-based, for example
  • How to promote sustainable development of technological and digital infrastructures in the developing world. Hint: It has to do with engaging the world’s tech experts
  • On humanitarian infrastructure development projects, management, engagement and monitoring
  • The new frontier opportunity of digital financial services, and how it’s proving itself in the developing world first
  • The institutional shock of Ebola in West Africa in 2014, and why ICTs were critical in handling the outbreak
  • How large tech players could help (some have) speed up digital inclusion, literacy and rights (and why they stand to greatly benefit from it)
  • Examples of affordable cellular infrastructure development with humanitarian purposes and results

OUR CONVERSATION FEATURES THE FOLLOWING

Names:

  • Mobile Solutions Technical Assistance and Research project (mSTAR)
  • FHI 360
  • Bank Asia Limited
  • Lonestar Cell MTN Liberia
  • Orange Liberia (formerly Cellcom)
  • Google (Alphabet), X, Project Loon
  • Facebook, Internet.org
  • Microsoft
  • Airtel
  • University of Columbia
  • TBN Jakarta
  • World Economic Forum (WEF)
  • Vodacom
  • United Nations
  • Cisco, John Garrity
  • USAID
  • Steve Song, NSRC, Village Telco
  • Lord’s Resistance Army
  • Ongo
  • SANCCOB
  • Vanu

Topics:

  • Information and Communication Technologies (ICT)
  • Mobile money
  • Digital Inclusion, Digital Financial Services, Connectivity, Internet Penetration, Inter-social Connectivity and Divide
  • Cellular Infrastructure, Fiber Optics, Long-Range Wi-Fi
  • Mobile Network Operators
  • Teachers Salaries, Payment
  • Real-time Data-based Management, Agriculture
  • Development Project Management, Monitoring, Evaluation, Pivoting, Reporting
  • Ebola, 2014 West Africa Ebola outbreak
  • Technology, Emerging, Low-Cost
  • SMS
  • (Social) Impact Investing
  • Dynamic Spectrum Usage
  • Women’s Internet Usage
  • Digital Identity, Biometrics
  • Refugees

Places:

  • Washington, DC
  • Potomac, MD
  • Bangladesh
  • Liberia
  • Rwanda
  • Boston, MA
  • Jakarta, Indonesia
  • Nigeria
  • Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC)
  • Ghana
  • Bangkok, Thailand
  • Uganda
  • Sudan
  • Central African Republic
  • India
  • Jordan

EPISODE CRIB NOTES

Download an automated transcript. (2:24) Hi Stephen, it’s good to be here, Thank you. (2:29) I am in Washington DC at the moment in a very beautiful morning. I just came from the Potomac, I went out for a morning row and a kayak it was quite good. It’s really nice here today. (3:08) Well, maybe we should spell out the acronym to start with. It’s a project called the mobile solutions technical assistance and research project. It’s tied with USAID, its global development lab and it has a few key areas of focus digital financial services colloquially referred to as Mobile Money, Digital Inclusion which really includes two topics internet access and a focus on gender and ICT. The third areas like data for development, real-time data for adaptive management is sort of a data topic and we also do a lot of work under M Star that has to do with technology agriculture. (3:45) Project that’s been extended starting 2012, it’ll go to 2019 we used to have 30 to 40 things going on at once field staff in about six countries, a lot of very no experimental things or cutting-edge things you know trying  to prove concepts trying to try out new approaches. It’s a really diverse interesting project. (4:25) It is you know there are so many interesting things to try in so many different technical areas that the easiest thing to do is to work with those who have a receptive ear, receptive mind to the idea of trying something new. So it’s very much it’s a mechanism don’t get a big budget and you know start spending it. It’s when USAID wants to try something, they put money into the mechanism and then we make it happen. And so it’s very much in partnership with USAID field missions when they have an existing project that they want to you know add something technological to or we run our own standalone projects as well when a US admissions into interested in trying something’s we do our global and character. So with the real-time data work and we’re looking at including the use of data for adaptive management in a variety of locations. It’s very much whose game and who’s interested now so you know it’s not like you have to do ever at once. (5:33) So far it’s been we’re just on the cusp of getting into the practical aspects of it for about a year and a half we’ve been going through a series of stages of engaging the intellectual the academic community that focuses on adaptive management and then doing research and finding case studies around the world where it happens. I think maybe more on the general level you know what we’re trying to do is look for projects that are designed from the beginning to pivot one way or the other you know to make decisions based upon data that’s coming in and be explicitly ready to go left or go right based upon what the data says as opposed to you  know quarterly monitoring evaluation check-ins you know something more a live basis structuring data flows creating data flows. I’m using systems that include triggers or decision points at certain thresholds so that you say you know what we decided ahead of time that if we reach this threshold we are going to expand this, shrink this, cut this off, add another project elements. So we’re looking at right now a couple of different incipient user actives that have an intentional adaptive management component and we’re looking at working with those projects to make sure that the technology side, the data side of it is an explicit part of the project implementation. It’s more than the technology it’s the mentally that I’m going to be data-driven, I’m going to be my decisions based and data so you know that type of approach is supposed to in your quarterly reporting requirements or your typical us a project the mentality is what is new more than anything else. (7:11) We intend for this to be 4IP’s and for the USAID so my personal opinion is that asbestos is something at the ground floor. But it could be a you know there are longer projects, a five years we’re midway through there they start a new line of work or it could be applicable. So it’s meant to be for both ongoing projects and incipient ones. (7:47) Actually we’re just kind of coming to the end of the research period and it’s a bit early that we will have those the researchers isn’t completed yet. But yeah the stages were going through has been the most recent stage has been to find those examples to study what’s consistent about them to find you know common traits to those projects and then to have that influence our thinking but we’re not there yet. (8:29) Yeah we’ve had a lot of success with digital financial services in a few places most recently in Bangladesh we’ve had just really good success integrating working with US implementing partners to integrate digital financial services into various parts of different agricultural value chains one of the things we’ve accomplished. I’m most proud about is a new loan product we’ve done with Bank Asia and Bangladesh that so you know for you take credit to buy various agricultural inputs but the typical repayment terms are not sensitive to when those farmers actually have money. So together Bank Asia and one of the larger agriculture providers in Bangladesh. We’ve created a loan product which is flexible with its repayment terms and is basically designed to be tied to the harvest cycle. So when you harvest your crop you get paid and that’s when your loan is due and you can repay your loan by a mobile phone. So that it’s been I think really it’s been really well received by farmers and I think that it’ll really expand throughout the country because obviously such a large percentage of the population is we’re related to the agricultural field so and that’s been really good in Liberia we’ve had a lot of success digitizing the salary payments of silver servants specifically those that fall under the ministries of health and education. And this is actually coming from Ebola the, the Ebola crisis so if you can imagine Ebola just really was a shock to the systems and infrastructure and payment systems and at the time you know those community health workers who were based in the field treating and assisting those affected by Ebola they weren’t able to be paid. So after a while you know there was still a health need in remote areas but they had to come back in they get paid and so they left places. So the idea is to make the system more robust such that if there is a future outbreak of disease like Ebola or Ebola itself that those people can stay in the field because now they get paid by mobile phones you know. (10:51) Yeah, the teachers example is a great one to point to the we did a small study and what their experience was like and it was like they saved like 20 hours on average you know. Because they have to walk long distances and then they have to wait in line hopefully the bank has money often the guard of the bank what’s his portion and then the teller of the bank wants their portion so by the time they’ve gone to collect their salary they lost a lot of it. And they’ve lost a lot of time so now you know they just have to go to a mobile money agent they get an SMS and the mobile if the agent cashes them out and then they they’ve saved time and money and we’ve actually had such success to their main Hemant mobile network operators in Liberia. One is the Lonestar the local MTN office and then Orange recently acquired another company and we’ve been working with arrange to bring down their cash out fees down to the level the other of MTN and they we recently negotiated that. So we’re really proud to you know basically play that role between you know the government and the citizens and if the civil servants and the companies so that the whole system works better and then everybody wins you know the ministry is more efficiently able to pay its staff members. The companies have more you know using their services in the field and obviously the people as we discuss they benefit also that’s kind of where we fit into this whole picture where a company you know is going about its business. But it’s not necessarily thinking about expanding in the direction that we were all my mind’s that have and like within the connectivity field. For example in Digital Inclusion we play that role in a very strong way as well I feel and that’s like I was saying this is one of my areas of greatest passion because there’s a really large amount of people in the world who are still unconnected to the internet and from our perspective and you know based upon the experiences that we have there’s no reason that those people don’t need to be need to remain unconnected. so you know there’s if the population of the world is roughly 7.5 billion still two and a half billion lack any form of like mobile connection or internet connection and really like the message that I promote as often as I can is that we can actually connect everybody now and it’s not a matter of fancier technologies like low-hanging satellites or drones or those things. They actually the Google loon project has proven a bit successful they they’re finding that as a B2B service that it does look viable not a B2B like not directly to consumer as a retail means it back all but any case you know what we focus on is more on the ground very innovative business models that take advantage of emerging technologies that lower cost they require their lower power consumption they run on solar and batteries and their structure to connect the last mile. Because they have lower operating costs and lower capital cost you know to set them up that means that means that in order for those companies installing the systems to earn revenue they have to make less before they’re in the black. (14:18) It’s a really interesting situation right now you know actually I really think of the last mile connectivity space is really dynamic it’s become dynamic in the last few years so you have companies like Facebook, Google, Microsoft doing a really interesting array of things trying to crack that not trying to figure out how to profitably in a commercially sustainable way provide connectivity to poorest of the poor. So Facebook made a number of differences around the world they’ve set up you know there’s internet org which is what’s known as a zero rated approach so for those who have a phone they’re able to access Facebook for free. But aside from that they’ve set up this telecom in for project which referred to as tip and tip has involved a number of companies which are making their own investments in innovation to basically bring down the cost of cellular infrastructure. So that it’s more affordable and more potentially profitable to set up smaller infrastructure in places where the people have less disposable income. (15:48) So in your urban area, the cell tower itself is going to be maybe 50 to 100 meters tall. It’s going to probably be connected to mains electricity, it’ll have multiple generators with diesel fuel backing it up and its connection to the system to the overall network which is what we refer to as backhaul it may be fiber or cable or something you know. It’s a part of an overall infrastructure. So when you go out to a more rural area all of those points become challenging so. But the solutions are just evolved and it’s very workable, it’s very doable. So in places like rural Rwanda, there’s an American company that produces its own low power consumption hardware Vanu. They’re out of Boston, they’re building 20 meter towers as opposed to 50, they run only on solar and battery. So they don’t have to you know run diesel fuel on dirt roads and the rainy season to keep the things running. They can run you know autonomously without you know that kind of infrastructure and then in terms of connecting that individual tower to the overall network. So you can call you know somebody in the capital or you basically more in the world they use different types of solutions rather than fiber. Because fiber is expensive so that you can use microwave repeaters, you can use long-range Wi-Fi. So Wi-Fi as a technology you think about it at your home right you have it in your house you can go for the first floor to the third floor and you still have Wi-Fi right. I mean the types of Wi-Fi that are out there are now they can go for you know 50 kilometers and connect with another router and then make a hop you know to where there is a more you know robust part of the overall nationwide infrastructure and so you know microwave hops that you can buy something for like five thousand dollars that’s just the operational capital cost we purchased the thing. Then its operational costs are much lower than like satellite for example. So but the important part that is really where the evolution is happening right now is in the business model. So Vanu has a model where they only provide 2G. So basically just phone and text to that population and they actually don’t set there they haven’t set up their own network. So you don’t go and buy a SIM card from Vanu, their business model is what’s known as a white label business model so they find their own capital. They set up their own infrastructure and they form interoperability arrangements with the established companies that have the licenses that they pay for the spectrum so if you pick up your phone in rural community, it says like Airtel or MTN or one of the other companies and you never know that you’re on Vaana network and then they form a revenue sharing arrangement. So any traffic goes by that tower vana shares the revenue but there’s another part of the business model which is really interesting and that is from the tower itself there’s free Wi-Fi. So if you have access to a Wi-Fi enabled device, you can just walk within range of the tower and surf the internet for free. But the profit comes from that Wi-Fi being ad-supported so like you’re on the Wi-Fi and then like a commercial interrupts you and then Vana gets that ad revenue. So as a business model that’s distinct from where you are your company is only making money from data and phones and SMSs. But for this rural model you split between Wi-Fi and 2G you know which is quite interesting and then also they’ve put these devices called bricks as a company out of Kenya on each tower and basically it’s like a four or five terabyte device with four or five terabytes worth of storage. So anytime somebody like consumes a video from YouTube that video is then stored locally. So the next person who wants to see it they only stream it from that device from that tower. So the quality is this that much better. Yeah so you know it’s different not just in the hardware but in the business model and like companies looking at being both the last mile connectivity provider and a solar power provider. Because you have this same problem if you’re remote you’re lacking the self-service and you’re lacking electricity right. So you know the some companies are looking at providing both of those at the same time and the actual off-grid you know the solar arrays that power small communities that are not connected to mains electricity those smart meters actually have SIM cards in them. So you see the symbiotic relationship between the business models of connectivity provision and electricity provision. (20:20) We were doing so many interesting things generally speaking we are trying to form bridges and bring together various players and address kind of an overall information gap. So it’s really exciting so where to begin. So one of the things that we are doing is been investing in researching these types of business models like I’ve just been describing and then promoting them to the world to spark interest from either entrepreneurs or investors into you know the profit potential for providing connectivity to these unconnected populations around the world. So about a year and half ago, we produced this business models for the last billing report on our blog and start project wordpress.com and then most recently we produced a tool for companies looking to kind of combine these different revenue streams for the provision of last mile connectivity. So that is on Digital development org, USAID, the labs, website where they capture a lot of dirt also. We did that for USAID you can basically go and punch in numbers and you can say okay I’m going to have Wi-Fi and 2G or I’m going to have just 3G and that’s going to be my business plan and it allows you to see how much investment is going to be required before and how much time needs to pass before you’re going to turn a profit. So we’ve tried to make it easier for would-be entrepreneurs to plan out these last mile connectivity like operations. We’re also on the cusp of doing a lot of who actually initiated already a lot of outreach to would-be investors including those who do themselves to be social impact investors. So last week we had my team we were there with us aid in Jakarta at two different social impact investment forums one of them was SANCCOB, the other one was TBN I forgot what it stands for and we’re basically we have panels where we talk about the investment potential for these last mile operations trying to pique the interest of would-be investors. And so like I was saying in terms of the information gap what we’re bringing to them we have some other initiatives we’re going to be working with the largest trade association for mobile network operators to produce more highly accurate maps of the unconnected areas are in the world. So you can then take you know Columbia University with support of one of Facebook’s initiatives has produced unprecedentedly accurate maps for a number of developing countries. So you take that data plus the data of you know where there is no signal and it allows you to produce a much clearer picture of what the addressable market is for connectivity. (23:06) You find that we’ve just launched this process but the investors that I’ve spoken with are most interested in like the largest markets possible. So Nigeria for example has a really large population you know amongst African countries and a really large unconnected population. So there’s a lot of interest in the potential scale of that profit there’s a ton of stuff going on in Ghana there’s a lot of interest in DRC because DRC also has a large population and it presents a really great market for last-mile solutions actually my personal experience my most sort of professionally rewarding experience was in Congo years ago and I was working with USAID. So you find that they are really interested and it’s a very country by country type of discussion. Because you know this the players the laws the dynamics the population size and so on are they really very country by country. One of the other things that we’re doing is going to be developing a mix set of indicators and measurements by which you measure simultaneously commercial returns and social impact. Because a lot of the types of investors out there that are going to be interested in last mile connectivity opportunities are specifically those like social impact investors. We want to enable them to if like for example if it’s a social impact investment fund we want to enable them to have an easier time of telling the story of the results to their individual investors and so that’s one of the other things we’re doing kind of on the information side. We’re also going to be we’re planning to work with we’re in discussions right now with the World Economic Forum which has been supporting an investor matching platform aiming to introduce so maybe the more last mile the rougher that the tougher more underserved markets to that whole global platform. So that these opportunities are easier to find for would-be investors. (25:20) Yeah since I started managing the project about two and a half years ago and they fortunately extended it to it so it’s going to be a seven-year project in the end which is good. so we do have some runway still you know looking down down the road a bit you know FHI 360 I like we very much are about public-private partnerships and this is the USAID funded project. But it’s definitely one that consistent with the way FHI works it involves a lot of collaboration with the private sector and I think that that more and more collaborations are a part of our future in this technical area. So in like yesterday I was speaking with the trade association for tower companies though we actually haven’t brought in tower companies to this whole connectivity equation. It’s actually quite important mobile network operators around the world have realized and say the last five 10 years that they actually don’t need to own their own infrastructure for this for their businesses to be successful. So what they’ve done is they’ve sold off their tower networks and then leased them back from tower companies and if you look at if you go to this website for tower exchange and read their reports you see that globally tower companies portfolios are growing at very high rates. But traditionally so they own infrastructure in developed and developing countries but traditionally they focused on the higher revenue markets. So you know like Bangkok you know just larger cities or urban areas where people can afford smartphones that can afford data plans. What we’re going to be trying to do with you know tower companies is trying to bridge the gap between where they are right now kind of focused on traditional business models and you know larger scale infrastructure and introducing them to this lower cost equipment and these business models with the aim of attracting them to evolving their own business models to include smaller scale you know more remote infrastructure in their portfolios. We think that they stand earned money and you know our goals were a non-profit right we just have to mandatory development goals. So if we can convince them to evolve their business model entice them you know to evolve to invest in smaller infrastructure that that they win as well. So if we’re trying to collaborate with companies so that they’re win-win situations they went on profit we went on development. (28:01) I think that people don’t want to be first, they want to see a really huge success story where an underdog came up and did last mile connectivity with a white label business model or wholesale internet business model and and made a ton of money and then they’ll follow. So like I was saying it’s a really dynamic space right now and it’s only become dynamic I would say in the last you know three years or two years maybe. So like I said we’re just beginning all this really intensive outreach to impact investors working on making facilitating connections between entrepreneurs and investors cataloging all of the different types of hardware working on the data on where there are unconnected areas making that data much more clear much more accessible to would-be investors. It’s kind of like my anticipation is that with a couple of success stories it’s just going to explode and that’s good right like we care about and connecting people to the internet because of all the realities of participating in the modern society being connected to services to education to being aware of the opportunities that are out there for business to have more fluid trade amongst you know for mobile money to do its job you know like we were discussing earlier it only works if there actually is a connection right to rural area. So we really care about that you know I’ve seen it really I personally have as an experience that has proven to me that this actually can be successful a number of years ago I was working for USAID and I used to travel all the time doing technology for development projects and I remember I’d come back from the field and I was only at my dad I used to share half of a cube you know is there for about 45 minutes and I get a call and it’s like Troy can you go to Congo. I’m like yeah! What for like of course I’m at my cube of course I got to cut him out going there in the past but you know the situation was that the Lord’s Resistance Army. You know this rebel group out of Uganda which spread to associate with then just Sudan Central African Republic in Northeast Congo they had committed a really huge atrocity. They’d killed like 300 people they’d kidnapped 300 more and then but word of this massacre in this atrocity didn’t reach outside world for more than 3 weeks. Because there were just no communications infrastructure. And it was people were like do something about it like how can you address this with communications technology. So I was sent we led a team we charted as plane from Kinshasa and we flew up by kissing Gandhi up to this area which is literally the center of Africa northeast DRC near the border of least three of the countries and the challenge was we’ll figure out how to make these people in what way and eventually I settled on a small-scale cells that were powered by batteries and solar. They use satellite backhaul but they had a special compression technology you know these things which kind of sound geeky right. They make a difference and so we put in cell towers in the most dangerous locations. A lot of violence occurred and hadn’t been reported and you know we introduced the partner which was votocom to this technology which they’ve never considered before right they had that a more larger scale a more expensive diesel-powered diesel generator powered technology and we said no look use this technology and put it in the places where we want it to go and they’re like okay fine let’s do this. So we put in just four towers but when they were exposed to this just from a commercial side of them just looking at the numbers they realized that because of the lower capital expenditure is required to set these things up you can put them on buildings right you can put this on a tree and by the way in Bangladesh they’re building cell towers with bamboo now there’s a really interesting experiment that’s gone in there. So you find a building like a church on the hill and you put it on the bell tower and you’ve taken advantage of existing infrastructure and the radius of that tower is maybe you know ten fifteen kilometers because it’s a small population that’s enough. So anyway when Vodacom took a look at the numbers of these small sites that we put in there like, oh, wow! We can actually make a lot of money connecting other parts of the country which are less dangerous. So they then in turn installed a hundred and fifty small sites in other parts of the DRC and I made a lot of money from is actually funny I was it of a telecom for project conference last year. And I ran into my former colleague on when we were doing negotiations to vote come on the other side he now works for Facebook and he said Troy those small towers are earning millions a month for Vodacom forget about the larger infrastructure and the profound thing that I actually didn’t think about at the time because you kind of analyzed that small community like well how many live here what’s their disposable income and then I was just surprised that actually a lot of the revenue doesn’t come from those people. It comes from people calling into those communities. So it’s like in Clydra (???) because their children have gone off to study or gone off to find work in the cities and the parents remained you know as farmers in these areas like in Niagara and Congo these places where we were so those towers were making money so was this commercially sustainable humanitarian project with communications technology. (33:30) Yeah, ironic actually small infrastructure is also going into urban areas as well they talk about densifying the network. Because there’s so much data demand you find much much smaller devices also in urban areas maybe unexpectedly because they and those are primarily about data traffic the cool thing is that there’s some synergies between the technologies which are about making connections better for urban areas and rural areas well anyway I find that interesting. (34:26) There’s some really challenges out there you know whereas in last month connectivity there is really a lot of momentum and there are a lot of they’re like I didn’t even mention TV white spaces or you know Microsoft’s efforts to promote dynamic spectrum usage which is a whole another topic for connectivity one area we’re going to be doing a bit of research in India relates to the cultural factors limiting equitable access to communications technology between men and women the research consistently shows that you know women a huge percentage like a much lower percentage have access to mobile phones to the internet. Because their husbands often limit them from having that and you know obviously from a development perspective you really care about that type of you know inequitable access and within a population. So if you think about the role women in families and you know there was research in West Africa a few years ago that showed that you know given a really small amount of income that single mothers will still spend a huge amount with a huge percentage of significant percentage of their money on communications. Because it is a very important part of their livelihoods and are communicating trading just you know the fact that in other parts of the world women have a lot less access to communications technology is a big issue and you’re talking about cultural factors right. If this isn’t a business case this isn’t a business model or a technology solution it’s a cultural one right. So the research that  we’re going to be looking at in India to start with I think is of great is really high importance and I think everybody should be thinking about how we crack the nut of the cultural factors limiting access to communications technology. (36:32) I really admire a couple of people in this field always inverting that connectivity and there are some people that really know this stuff very well. And I think a very generous of spirit you know in terms of sharing information and being open to everybody’s ideas. So I think that Steve song he’s got a number of blogs many possibilities net I think that that’s really he’s a really just he’s turned to by everybody in the world from United Nations to Facebook people when I talk to Steve and he’s just he’s been an entrepreneur he had a really interesting technology. I don’t know if it’s still going or not he wanted to connect communities by a mesh networks and he said he built a hardware a piece of hardware called mesh potato and then there’s the counterpart is really a great collaborator named John Garrity who came from Cisco to the USAID not too long ago he also is just a really big thinker and very active person making all kinds of connections reaching out to anybody that possibly could be a collaborator. It’s really lucky that he’s a part of our work on connectivity he’s probably the main factor that’s really driving this forward from USAID. (37:53) I have a huge interest in digital identities actually so the extent to which identity is a tool for your inclusion in society and your economy your ability to study your credit your ability to get benefits from your government a lot of people don’t have the identities in the world or what they have is just sort of really not a I guess an acceptable standard. So the ability to use biometric information stored in a secure way the word on the top of my wall I painted my whiteboard paint the were done that I thought my wall is inclusion like that’s what we really care about it’s not about the technology for the technology’s sake right it’s about working hard and creative ways so that people have that chances right that they are included in their society. so that’s what we really care about so I think that that is an area that’s just it’s also very nascent I feel an application you know you see refugees in Jordan you know going up to an ATM where they verify who they are or iris right but I feel like for development that’s an area of great potential. (38:55) Pleasure I really love this area and it’s a tremendous you know honor to be Able to work in this field. So thanks for the interest Stephen.

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