You have a project to connect schools via the Konnect initiative in the DRC? What does that involve?
We follow all government statements with interest to see if it is possible to create synergies with our businesses and priorities. In the DRC, President Félix Tshisekedi has been emphasizing since the beginning of his term that education and digitization are priorities for the government, driven by the ambition to reduce the digital divide in the country.
We have therefore positioned ourselves as a legitimate, credible, and experienced connectivity provider capable of delivering value in line with the government's priorities. We have identified a local partner with whom we have developed the project: Schoolap for the education aspect and Flash Services as the commercial partner responsible for providing the distribution service.
As a reminder, Schoolap is a company that offers digitization services for the DRC's national educational content. It then makes this content available on its app. These services are paid for, and schools must subscribe to them. To access them, an internet connection is obviously required, which is where we come in.
This project was presented to the relevant authorities, which allowed it to be implemented in two phases:
- The first phase, which we have already begun, consists of connecting 3,600 schools across the country to high-speed internet.
This initiative allows us to reach our core targets: once the school is connected, families and relatives also want to benefit from an internet connection, as do businesses… We are therefore being asked to roll out our Konnect service.
- We are currently working on the second phase of the project, which targets 70,000 schools. We will communicate about this phase in due course.
Why did you choose the DRC in the first place? Will the initiative be rolled out in other countries?
Every country and every government has its own priorities, even if education remains one of the priority areas. Education is also very important to us. It is part of our social DNA. As a result, we are holding discussions in several countries to try to create synergies to bring education-related projects to fruition. This year will be full of announcements!
In 2018, we asked you about your Konnect Africa activities. Where are you today? Can we take stock?
Today, Konnect Africa has become a player that is growing little by little, establishing itself in more countries and gaining more and more customers, both businesses and individuals. We can count on families and community customers in the most remote areas, whether in the DRC, Côte d'Ivoire, Congo Brazzaville, Nigeria, Benin, Togo, or Cameroon. All of these countries are places where our services are highly valued and in demand.
Today, we can connect businesses for which the internet was previously inaccessible and very expensive. For example, we recently connected a chick breeding company in the middle of nowhere. Today, the company's server is hosted in the Netherlands and it has almost doubled its production.
In Punia in the DRC, where there is a small-scale gold mining operation, we have connected four points that have become meeting places for the local population. We connect remote areas that have never had internet access. Some people even call us "the WhatsApp managers" because since we deployed our services in these areas, WhatsApp and video have been working.
These partnerships we have with local entities are a credible and solid gateway to sustaining our business on the continent.
You launched your own Konnect satellite at the beginning of the year. What are your next steps?
Our development is largely marked by the launch of our Konnect satellite, which was launched on January 16
,
2020, and will be commercially operational next fall. We still have ground equipment to install, so we hope that the COVID-19 crisis will not delay the commissioning and deployment of our activities too much.
However, we will be able to deliver on our promises with 75GB of capacity on this satellite, covering more than 40 countries with internet speeds of up to 100 megabits per second.
We are truly in a game-changing situation on the continent.