44: #FreeBasicsMustFall

44: #FreeBasicsMustFall

Subscribe on iTunes | Subscribe on Spotify

Facebook is still smarting from having Free Basics kicked out of India. Clearly no one was more upset by India’s emphatic rejection of Mark Zuckerberg’s walled garden project than venture capitalist and Facebook board member, Marc Andreessen, who took to Twitter last week to express his frustration at the country’s decision — a move that was met by global outrage.

Nevertheless, we have Andreessen to thank for inspiring our discussion on this week’s episode of the African Tech Round-up, and re-igniting the debate around net neutrality, and whether companies like Facebook ought to be supported in their efforts to provide "internet lite" to the world’s poorest who would not otherwise access the web at all.

Also in this week’s episode, you can also look forward to hearing what technology trends are tickling the fancy of a chap named Siya Xuza. He’s a young engineering graduate from Harvard, who got his start in science very young, experimenting with rocket fuel in his mother’s kitchen in a little rural town in the Eastern Cape, South Africa.

These days, he’s more famous for his prowess in the field of energy engineering— which has won him numerous awards and endowments from around the world, so much so that he’s even had a planet named after him, and been appointed brand ambassador for Total South Africa.

Listen to the full chat with Siya, along with Total’s General Manager for the company’s Marketing Services Competency Centre, Dr Jerry Gule.