The Lokole

As the title of this challenge says; "Strong, prosperous, and inclusive communities are built upon engaged and connected citizens who actively participate in shaping their social, economic, and political future through technology innovation. Yet, for the most marginalized who lack connectivity, these technologies further exclude them from essential services".

For instance the following countries: Burundi, Chad, Central Africa Republic, The Democratic Republic of the Congo, Eritrea, Guinea-Bissau, Burundi, etc. have less then 10 percent Internet users (https://www.internetworldstats...).

Not being connected on Internet in the 21st century, means missing a huge part of life's learning advancement and transformation through technology.

This is were the Lokole comes in.

Lokole is a device that enables affordable access to efficient communication via internet in unconnected areas of sub-Saharan Africa. The Lokole is important because it empowers everyone who is impaired by the poor
communication infrastructure in rural areas.

The main problem solved by the Lokole is the high price of access to communication technology and mobile data. We tackle this problem in two ways.

Firstly, we use extremely cheap and yet general-purpose computer hardware for the Lokole device such as Raspberry Pi 3. This means that our total cost per unit is below 200 USD. The cost of these devices can be covered via crowd-funding or donations so that the units can be heavily subsidized when deployed in sub- Saharan communities. Note that a single device can be shared by an entire community, e.g. of 100 people, so that even in the absence of subsidies, the hardware is still affordable for most.

Secondly, the Lokole device, via our custom software, enables a community to share the costs of mobile data and to purchase mobile data when the prices are lowest.

The key characteristics of the type of user that forms my market are the following: (a) User with no access to Information Communication Technology (ICT); (b) User who cannot afford the current cost of Internet services (e.g. internet café or mobile data plan); (c) User who does not have good Internet quality (slow connection); (d) User with a lower performing computer; (e) User in communities that lack telephone lines or other ICT infrastructure (e.g. internet café); (f) User who does not have ICT physical infrastructure (e.g. laptop, phone); (g) User who lack skills to use the ICT tools; (h) User who does not have adaptable and appropriate information contents; (i) People of all age, since the Lokole has a general purpose and is built to
be very easy to use by everyone.

Half of my life I lived and worked in 5 different African countries (Congo, Angola, Zambia, Namibia, South Africa, Mozambique). Unfortunately, I haven’t received emails from the people I have met and known in those years. They only phone me if necessary, since they cannot access emails or other internet-based ICTs.

The main problem solved by the Lokole is the high price of access to communication technology and mobile data.

We tackle this problem in two ways:

Firstly, we use extremely cheap and yet general-purpose computer
hardware for the Lokole device such as Raspberry Pi 3. This means that our total cost per unit is below 200 USD. The cost of these devices can be covered via crowd-funding or donations so that the units can be heavily
subsidized when deployed in sub-Saharan communities.

Note that a single device can be shared by an entire community, e.g. of 100 people, so that even in the absence of subsidies, the hardware is still affordable for most.

Secondly, the Lokole device, via our custom software, enables a community to share the costs of mobile data and to purchase mobile data when the prices are lowest.

How does this work?

The Lokole device creates a local wireless network that can be accessed via any wifi capable device within a range of 25 meters. While on this network, users can use the free apps hosted on the Lokole device: simple email client and offline web reader. All of these interactions only use local computation so no bandwidth costs are incurred. Once per day, when the cost of bandwidth is lowest (usually at night), the Lokole purchases some mobile bandwidth and exchanges data with our server in the cloud. In this way, emails written on the Lokole are sent into the world and email sent to users on the Lokole device are received. We use compression algorithms to further reduce the bandwidth necessary to perform this exchange, saving even more money. This keeps the day-to-day cost of operating the Lokole device for all of its users at 1 USD.

Let’s discuss why Lokole is a transformative innovation using the example of the Congolese city Basankusu.

Basankusu is a relatively large city (population 30,000, territorial headquarter). As such, there are relatively good services there, e.g. local internet service providers (ISP) such as Vodacom cover the city. However, there are no internet cafes or other ways for locals to leverage the presence of the internet in the city!

Why is this the case?

As we mentioned throughout all of our application, the problem is the low local purchasing power which makes the ISP services unaffordable and makes opening internet cafes a risky proposition for local entrepreneurs as there will be low demand for the high-price services.

Therefore, the issue of internet/email access in Basankusu is not technological but it’s socio-economical.

This is where the Lokole project fits in: we use technology to tackle at the root these specific socio economical problems that the local communities reported to us.

Lokole is a bottom-up solution, whose innovative nature relies on its technical simplicity and effectiveness. We didn’t reinvent the wheel, but we used existing technologies and services (Python, cellular modems, cloud storage, compression, batching, single-board computers) and adapted them to the real needs of rural people (expensive internet access). As such, Lokole is the only affordable solution to the problem at hand and thus a breakthrough solution for bridging the digital divide in the DRC and the whole Africa.

The Lokole project has two main pieces:

(1) The “Lokole device” hardware and

(2) software.

(1) The Lokole "device" Hardware is a cheap single-board computer that is deployed in a rural community. It provides email/app access in developing countries at a sustainable price by minimizing bandwidth utilization. It creates a local WiFi network. and when people access this network from their laptop or phone, they access the Lokole email and web applications where they can read and write emails.

(2) The “Lokole cloud server” software This is a set of programs deployed to cloud infrastructure. The goal of the Lokole cloud server is to connect the Lokole devices to the rest of the world.

The Lokole cloud server downloads the email data uploaded from the Lokole devices and manages the mailboxes associated with the users from the devices. As such, the Lokole cloud server is responsible for sending the emails from the Lokole devices to the world, receiving emails from the world and routing them to the Lokole devices. The server software is written in Python and Flask and runs on any IaaS provider (e.g. AzureCompute). The mailboxes are managed by integrating with an EaaS provider to ensure reliable delivery(e.g. SendGrid).

1) SMS don’t allow people to send attachments so our innovation allow people to send documents (useful for offices, the census, etc.), photos, learning-materials (useful for schools, long-distance learners), medical manuals, e-books and so on.

2) Internet Cafes are very expensive to setup and maintain; for instance, if people don’t use your service internet cafes lose money.

With the Lokole there is no setup required and the
purchase of the bandwidth is controlled thus no-risk for a potential kiosk-administrator. (https://www.internetworldstats.com/stats1.htm)

3) Vodacom is extremely expensive and 94% of people don’t have access to internet mainly due to this reason.

For example, students spend at least 1000 Frc ($0.60) a day for mobile phone airtime and 200 Fc for 10 min Internet connection.

Lokole, by pooling people resource, lower the cost of unlimited use of email down to $0.05 to make it affordable for everyone.

Generally, our product is built specifically to solve the problems of its intended users and to meet their needs in accessing the digital world. Because of this, there are many reasons that would lead our targeted market to choose our product over the other solutions:

1) Lokole is the most affordable.

2) Lokole is unique and there aren’t current direct competitors;

3) Lokole is the most accessible: very easy user interface, multi-language, small-and-light, plug-and-play;

4) Lokole is sustainable: solid hardware (tropicalized and protected), solid software (easily maintainable and open source) and environmentally friendly as it can be powered with incorporated solar panels.

I am travelling to the Congo DRC on July 21, 2019 (tickets and equipment purchased), to implement 10 Lokole devices in schools, rural clinics, community halls etc.

This will serve at least impact 1000 people within a couple of months, 100 people or more per Lokole. In one year, we expect to serve 10 thousand people in Basankusu district in Equateur province in the Congo DRC; this population do not have any public Internet cafes. And in five years our hope is to serve millions of people. Close to half of the world population are not able to access Internet due to data high price and the Lokole tackles this issue.

Within the next year, we plan to serve Basankusu, which is a relatively large distric (population 30,000, territorial headquarter). There are not any Internet cafe there (too expensive run).

We plan to adapt the Lokole technology to the people’s social-economic needs. Specifically, we will create income-generation business-model for tele-center kiosk where people can pay a very low fee for sending emails and accessing educational materials. This business model is more reliable and safe than internet cafes, since the cost of running can be lowered up and fixedto US$1 per day.

For the next five years, with contact as many organisations, non-profit and government in Africa and the world for collaboration to implement the Lokole devices in different countries for internet price and inaccessibility affect is the world problem.

Our technology is plug and play. The Lokole device has no display, no knobs, no keyboard. Just a black box. There in no need of licenses or government legal restrictions to operate the Lokole.

The only barriers we have know is financial to help us to work fulltime for this project.

We are very confident to be able to figure out how to overcome our finances within a year from the time when we lunch our first pilot project on July 23, 2019. And we know it will be positive. Because we believe in Lokole to be the dream device the world did not know about and now it is born. It will be loved and bought as loaves of bread.

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3 people part-time volunteers and several sporadic volunteers.

No one is paid a salary.

Nzola is the originator of the Lokole device, which is an Offline Portable Web and Email Network server (OPWEN), and the CEO of a congolese-canadian NGO called Ascoderu. He is a native of the DRC (Africa) who now lives in Victoria (Canada). While being employed for 19 years by the humanitarian organization Mission Aviation Fellowship, he worked as as Radio Communications Technician in the Congo, Angola, Namibia, South Africa and Zambia. During those years, Nzola developed expertise with communication devices and an acute understanding of the communication problems in
rural sub-Saharan Africa. He has experienced living in both situations with and without telecommunication infrastructures. In places with no telecommunication infrastructures life was more static and he realized how access to the digital world can help to improve people's efforts. He deeply thought how to alleviate this problem, and he dreamed about creating the
OPWEN device and deploy it in Africa. Today, Nzola's dream is about to become true.

Clemens is a full-stack software developer, who lived in Togo, Mali Zambia, Canada and is now based in New York, USA. He honed his software chops working on large-scale projects at Amazon and Microsoft and on open-source projects such as the sharing platform yunity.

Laura is a self-taught developer. She worked at the British Columbia Council for International Cooperation (BCCIC) and for Amnesty International in Canada.

We are partnering with Internet-In-A-Box.

Internet-in-a-Box (IIAB) is a low-cost digital library, consisting of a wireless access point with storage, which users nearby can connect to.

Internet In A Box has incorporated the Lokole software in their new release, to add the digital communications future. The Lokole helps IIAB customers to not only read from the library, but also communicate with emails. 

We are running a non-profit venture. As a non-profit, our business model is sustainable because we have two streams of incoming revenue and only one stream of outgoing expenses. If someone is interested in the Lokole services and can afford its costs (e.g. a NGO like Susila Dharma International), they purchase the Lokole hardware from us and will pay us a small mark-up on top of the costs of operation per month. If someone is interested in the Lokole but can’t afford its costs (e.g. a community in a rural area), we use the
buffer of money collected from the above plus donations that Ascoderu collects to subsidize the cost of the hardware for the community (e.g. via reduction in price and/or micro-credit). The daily operational costs are
low enough so that each community can cover them independently (e.g. $1 per day). As such, Ascoderu as an organization has no long-term costs for Lokole hardware. Our only long-term costs are operation of our cloud
infrastructure for the email servers which we cover via donations from big tech companies (e.g. we currently receive $5000 per year in free Azure credits from Microsoft Vancouver).

We are running a non-profit venture. As a non-profit, our business model is sustainable because we have two streams of incoming revenue and only one stream of outgoing expenses. If someone is interested in the Lokole services and can afford its costs (e.g. a NGO like Susila Dharma International), they purchase the Lokole hardware from us and will pay us a small mark-up on top of the costs of operation per month. If someone is interested in the Lokole but can’t afford its costs (e.g. a community in a rural area), we use the
buffer of money collected from the above plus donations that Ascoderu collects to subsidize the cost of the hardware for the community (e.g. via reduction in price and/or micro-credit). The daily operational costs are
low enough so that each community can cover them independently (e.g. $1 per day). As such, Ascoderu as an organization has no long-term costs for Lokole hardware. Our only long-term costs are operation of our cloud
infrastructure for the email servers which we cover via donations from big tech companies (e.g. we currently receive $5000 per year in free Azure credits from Microsoft Vancouver)..

We would love to join a supportive community of peers, funders, and experts to help advance our work through Solve's 12-month program; receive mentorship and strategic advice from Solve and MIT networks; attend Solve at MIT.
This will help our project work to accelerate to ignite the world transformative change.

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Any organization operating in the following domains:

- Internet Service Provider

- Software and Web Application Development

- Telecommunication

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