Press Releases 2011 2010 2009 2008 2007 Internet For All. Part I Released on 02 Jun 2010 The internet has become a constant and inescapable part of our lives. But what would life be like without e-mail, Facebook, or Skype? It's hard to remember a time when we didn't have any of these - unless, of course, you are among those who never had it and who has still not got it. Welcome to Gitata, a small village in Nassarwara state in northern Nigeria. It is a two-hour drive from the shiny capital Abuja and is not remote in terms of physical accessibilty. But, in many other respects, Gitata is disconnected. It is not connected to the national electricity grid and has no running water or even a single tarred road. Its people are mainly traders and farmers. Strolling through the village's small market, we spoke to people - young and old. I asked them whether they knew what the internet was. ‘I hear it's something people use to talk to each other.’ said one shopkeeper in response to our questionnaire. An elderly man described it as ‘something that young people play with.’ One woman saw it as something that ‘connects people with wires.’ Wherever we went, the answer to the question of being connected to the Internet was almost always no. Further investigation revealed that the nearest Internet-connected computer was 35km away in the town of Keffi. The mission in Gitata was to observe and learn; to find out what impact the Internet would have on the lives of people here. What would they do with it if they had it? Would it change their understanding of themselves and the rest of the world? Enter Nicholas Madaki, a farmer, and Moses Maisauri, a teacher. These two young men were chosen after a meeting of the village elders to represent Gitata in a social experiment.  In January 2010, before taking our leave, we handed over two Internet-enabled mobile phones to them and returned a few weeks later to find out how they had progressed. The results have been an eye-opener. Both Nicholas and Moses first had to overcome the challenge of getting used to the technology: setting up a mobile e-mail account, establishing the basic connections to the service provider etc - challenges that mobile users everywhere experience.        But the barriers to information access are higher in Gitata. With no connection to the power grid, Nicholas and Moses had to pay a local barber who owned a generator a small fee to charge the phone. The fully charged phone would work for a day or so until it needed to be recharged. The next barrier was getting a signal. The connection to the mobile service provider was irregular weak. It was no surprise then that access to the web required hours of patience. Then there was the issue of cost. Our post-paid mobile phone needed regular recharging. The basic daily recharge required was about Five Hundred (N500) Naira, or just over US$3 a day but with patience and determination, Moses and Nicholas finally got online. So what was their browsing experience like? Back