DUBAI, 10 January 2022 – From boosting connectivity in refugee camps to empowering women across Latin America, Expo 2020 Dubai-backed entrepreneurs used the opening day (Sunday 9 January) of Travel and Connectivity Week to show how their connectivity and digital innovations are transforming lives.
Jangala is a UK-based charity whose ‘Big Box’ – a lightweight briefcase-sized device – transforms any type of internet connectivity into Wi-Fi that is easy to manage and scale, from tens to thousands of users.
The idea, which stemmed from the experiences of refugees living in the Calais Jungle camp in France, is easily scalable and provides communities with connectivity that is vital to the provision of health, education and other essential services and crucial to achieving the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Richard Thanki, Jangala’s Co-Founder and Managing Director, said: “We believe that internet access is a key underlying infrastructure that underpins us trying to achieve every one of the SDGs.
“Our goal is to have thousands of deployments a year by 2024, and we want to connect five million people by the end of 2025.”
To date, 40 Big Box prototypes have been used to connect 30,000 marginalised people across Europe, Asia and Africa, in partnership with schools, healthcare clinics, emergency response teams and refugee support organisations.
Thanki’s comments came during ‘Closing the Digital Divide’, a string of sessions at the Nexus for People and Planet that marked the start of Travel and Connectivity Week – Expo 2020’s sixth Theme Week, currently under way until 15 January.
Peru-based Laboratoria also showcased its efforts to break down barriers and stereotypes to inspire women across Latin America to enter the tech industry through its six-month boot camp, helping those from low-income backgrounds unleash their full potential and overcome structural and societal barriers.
Speaking in a video message, Mariana Costa, Founder of Laboratoria, said: “In Laboratoria, we like to say that the people designing and building technology today are the people that will design and build our future – humanity’s future, given technology has penetrated every single aspect of society.
“In this sense, if we want women to be part of designing the future of our world, then we need women designing technology today.”
Both Jangala and Laboratoria are among 50 projects supported under Expo 2020’s Global Best Practice Programme. Launched under the theme ‘Small Steps, Big Leaps: Simple Solutions for Sustainable Impact’, the programme honours a Bureau International des Expositions (BIE) mandate for all World Expo hosts to create a platform that spotlights tangible solutions that can be replicated, adapted and scaled for greater global impact – highlighting World Expos as powerful platforms for inspiring change and driving human progress.
