The Open Internet for Africa

The Open Internet for Africa

Author: BBC World Service November 16, 2022 Duration: 36:47

We hear about a new plan to drive economies and improve lives across Africa – the Open Internet project between the continent and the EU. A report “The Open Internet as Cornerstone of Digitalisation” is funded by the EU and points out in detail what needs to done to secure easy, reliable and cheap online access without which development will simply stall. We speak to two of the report’s authors – one from the EU and the other from Africa.

Monitoring Mangroves in the Pakistan Indus Delta Mangrove forests are hugely impacted by climate change and monitoring them from space with satellites doesn’t deliver enough data to know fully how they are being impacted by rising temperatures and sea levels. Now a pilot project in the Indus River Delta, just south of Karachi in Pakistan, has used drones to image the mangroves allowing the researchers to study one of the world’s largest forests. The project’s director Obaid Rehman is on the show to tell us about their work and also how these mangrove forests can be used for carbon capture. He says their work should lead to more plantations of the forest too.

The talk at Web Summit 2022 Technology gatherings are back in full swing and Web Summit in Portugal is one of the biggest. This year’s conference was at full capacity and tech reporter Jane Wakefield joined the queues to see what was preoccupying the tech industry as 2022 draws to an end – and the big thing appears to be the Metaverse.

The programme is presented by Gareth Mitchell with expert commentary from Ghislaine Boddington.

Studio Manager: Tim Heffer Producer: Ania Lichtarowicz

(Image: Getty Images)


Every week, the team at Digital Planet from the BBC World Service takes you beyond the headlines to explore how technology is reshaping lives, cultures, and economies across the globe. This isn't just a rundown of gadget releases or corporate earnings; it's a grounded conversation about the real-world impact of our digital choices. You'll hear from engineers in Nairobi, policymakers in Brussels, and coders in São Paulo, offering a genuinely international perspective that challenges the usual Silicon Valley narrative. Each episode digs into the human stories behind the innovations, examining both the promise and the peril of our connected age. We tackle questions about ethics, accessibility, and the unintended consequences of progress, making sense of complex issues with clear, thoughtful reporting. Tune in for a nuanced and curious exploration of our technological moment, where the focus is always on the people designing, using, and living with these tools every day. This podcast provides the context you need to understand not just what's new, but what it actually means.
Author: Language: English Episodes: 100

Digital Planet
Podcast Episodes
Inoculation videos against misinformation [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 43:00
Inoculation against misinformation Could people be inoculated and protected against misinformation online? A new study published in Science Advances shows that short animated videos could protect people from harmful cont…
India’s cyber scam scourge [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 45:23
Nearly a third of people in India lost money through online fraud in 2020 alone. Of them, it is thought that only 17% saw any returns through redressal mechanisms. Despite this prevalence of scams, reports have shown tha…
Misinformation on the midterms on social media [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 36:08
With the US midterm elections only a few months away Twitter has announced how it plans to “enable healthy civic conversation” on its platform i.e. how they plan to control political disinformation. Journalist Emma Wooll…
How Nancy Pelosi’s flight was tracked [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 37:46
Were you one of the 2.92million people who was watching Nancy Pelosi fly into Taiwan on FlightRadar24 bypassing Chinese bases in the South China Sea as it approached Taipei? It’s one of the most popular flight tracking s…
Is disability tech delivering? [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 36:53
Why does tech not understand my speech? Physicist Dr Claire Malone is facing a problem: no speech-to-text software understands her. She is living with cerebral palsy, a condition that affects her movement and muscle coor…
Grassroots data – holding the powerful to account [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 41:16
Open source investigators We live in an age where there is data on almost everything, and a large chunk of it is publicly available. You only need to know where to look. There are many investigators on the internet that…
Self-driving cars on the horizon? [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 40:06
A recent amendment to a regulation by the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) will extend automated driving technology to 130 km/h. The regulation, which will come into effect in January 2023, will set…
Are internet shutdowns evolving? [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 35:09
Internet shutdowns have been a global issue for many years, and Digital Planet has reported on many of them, from Cuba and Myanmar to Iran. A new United Nations Human Rights Office (OHCHR) report now warns of the dramati…
Deepfake calls to European mayors? [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 37:40
On June 24th, the mayor of Berlin thought she was on a video call with the mayor of Kyiv, Vitali Klitschko. The call, however, was fake. The head of the Deutsche Welle’s fact-checking team Joscha Weber tells Gareth what…
What’s the deal with the metaverse? [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 37:34
So what is the metaverse really? Following a montage of BBC World Service listeners’ responses and opinions, contributing expert Ghislaine Boddington will shed light on this question. As it turns out, while there are cur…