The “Alliance For An Affordable Internet” is a public-private partnership which intends to build a huge, expensive African Internet. Its headquarters are in Nairobi, Kenya, now dubbed “Africa’s Silicon Valley”.
Hillary Clinton alluded to this monstrous State Department project when she stepped down from her Secretary job on February 1, 2013. She said, “One billion more persons will have access to the Internet”. She did not expand her sentence to include… “and Americans will pay for most of it”.
Here is the scheme: Bloomberg News reported on Feb 14, 2011 that President Obama’s budget for FYE2012 will include $307 billion in grants to Silicon Valley. Specifically, the individual grant amounts in Obama’s budget are: $148 billion for research and development, $80 billion for federal information systems and $77.4 billion for computer education. Much (most?) of the grant money will be spent for Africa’s Internet.
The partners of “Alliance For An Affordable Internet” include the U.S Department of State, the World Wide Web Foundation and five Silicon Valley computer giants (Google, Microsoft, Yahoo!, Intel and Cisco Systems).
Americans will get little benefit from these huge grants, nor can we endure the $307 billion in the cash outflow from the U.S. treasury. While we struggle to pay for health and indigent assistance, our constant wars and our corroding infrastructure, these grants will indeed bury us further into debt.
The World Bank, the UN and many foundations are available to fund an African Internet. If the international funds refuse to assist, the E.U. and the U.K. should fund this project because of their large African associations.
George Washington Hunt