 In 2016, 3 billion people and 25 billion objects will be connected to communication and information networks. We are nearer than ever before to a world in which not only people, but also things will be increasingly connected, opening up new possibilities to scientific research and the dissemination of knowledge. The penetration of the internet and technological know-how in the peripheries of the world are a great challenge, affecting the destinies of many inhabitants of the planet. The telecommunications laboratory for development at the Abdo Salam Centre of Theoretical Physics is full of unusual things, precision electronic instruments and metal workers vices, a diverse collection of items that brings theoretical physics back to the world of objects. Carlo and Marco are researchers and experts in the construction of communication networks in developing countries, which is technological innovation, but its low cost. There are also branches of branches or steel. These are antennas made with coffee bars, these are a bar of oil and semis. It is simply a milk cylinder. Inside there is the active part of the antenna, which is a small wire that splashes into the antenna. It is a standard connector to connect it to the radio. This is a working antenna with more or less comparable performance to a commercial antenna, which, in fact, was like a radio. Unfortunately, it is spread to many people who need a very expensive equipment or need to buy equipment from companies that provide closed boxes, let's say, that are functioning in which the user cannot modify anything. Our approach is the one for which the user has a role to play and therefore can modify things, can install things on its own and then have a relative role. Although it may not look like it, the laboratory is specialised in wireless communication. Its researchers have set up radio links in the remotest parts of the world, often achieving excellent results. In the Venezuelan Andes they set a world record with a connection through antennas of an incredible 380 kilometres. They use creative methods and hold courses in the poorest countries in the world to provide them with the best technology available at the lowest cost possible. They are an open team constantly enriched by new collaborations. I started working actively with the Centre in 1995 and I was involved in looking for a connectivity solution for the University of Leif in Nigeria. In the end we chose a wireless solution that was much more economical and much more effective for that particular application. It was the first country in Africa that connected to the Internet and with these steps they managed to attract a donation to develop their own University. Sometimes a small change can have notable effects, as it was in this case. Carlo and Marco live out of their suitcases much of the time. This time Carlo is headed for Kigali in Rwanda and Marco is on his way to Dakar in Senegal to supervise two courses being held at the same time. Co-financed by the International Telecommunication Union. The courses are on the functioning of short and long range wireless networks. The Kigali Institute of Science and Technology, familiar known as KIST, is the centre of excellence in Rwanda for the study of technology and IT. It is attended by young, ambitious, highly motivated people from the peripheries of the country. There is a very high demand with regard to wireless networks in Africa. We have got very few experts in this area for wireless networking. So we thought this is the right time for KIST to be able to host this event. The workshop for teachers and experts in communication technology for the use of wireless networks in Africa. This is the first time that KIST has been able to host this event. The workshop for teachers and experts in communication technology from several African universities will be held in one of its classrooms. The electrical coordinator is Professor Jonathan Wacagele, who specialised in the UK as well as in Italy with Carlo and Marco. He returned to Africa because he firmly believes in the possibility for his people to redesign technology autonomously and in an original manner. A number of technologies we've been using, technologies which have been designed in Europe, have been designed in America, but now it's our time also to participate. We have to be innovative. We've been receiving end, but I think it's a high time for us also to be able to contribute to the knowledge. We have to participate in a number of research so that we can contribute to the global world. The two weeks of intensive workshops deal with analysing the spectrum of electromagnetic waves and tenors, frequencies, the possibilities offered by short and long-range wireless networks, wavelengths and radio reception systems. Once home again, all the participants will organise similar courses, thus setting off a virtuous cycle of knowledge. Imagine, I've got this opportunity to come here. There are thousands out there waiting for what I'm going to achieve out here. So thousands of students are waiting for my return with the knowledge I'm going to take home. It is important to train the trainers for the sustainability programme because local communities, when they are empowered and have this knowledge, they own the programme, they feel motivated and it is easier for you to deliver the programme from generation to generation. The reason I am here for the workshop, this particular workshop, is because of the relevancy of the topic. Internet connectivity has been characterised as a human right and in Africa in general, there is very little infrastructure. So the only way to connect the masses to the internet is through cheap technologies like wireless. Just what we do now is to install the access points in the offices and some people or workers in the office can be connected through that access point. But I think it will be very helpful if we will use access points which can transmit to a very long distance. The universe is pervaded by electromagnetic waves without which life itself could not be generated. One example is sunlight. Even radio waves are electromagnetic waves and are a natural resource for long-distance communication. The waves propagate through the air, carrying energy and information to far-off places. A radio communication system is made up of apparatus for the transmission and reception of information. Wireless technology is the new communication tool used to connect a number of devices via radio. In information technology, it is used to create local wireless networks increasing the mobility of electronic devices and facilitating their connection to the internet. The ICTP experts use wireless technology for long-range connections too, known as Long Link. In Blantyre and Malawi, they have created an urban wireless network to connect some medical centres to the internet and to each other. Then they connected the medical centres to the makeshift clinics in remote villages, thus enabling prompt communication urgent diagnoses and continuous monitoring of data on malaria. In the country of a thousand hills, the internet connection of the villages to the capital could change the lives of many students, who today have to move to Kigali at a very tender age to be able to study. The financial burden for their families is enormous and often insurmountable. Like 90% of the students at the institute, Margaret lives on campus and pays the fees thanks to a government grant. I was born in Uganda in 1988. That's where my parents were living during their refugee. After that, we returned to Rwanda in 1994. I was six years old. Then I went to the secondary school in Kigali. Margaret and her roommates have earned their entrance to the institute through a lot of hard study and dedication and have no intention of giving up. These young women are ambitious and aim high and have a strong sense of responsibility towards their families and communities. After completing my postgraduate here, I'll be going far for the Masters and after that I'll do my PhD. It's long journey but I hope I'll make it because I'm not the first one to do it and I'm really interested in that. Margaret attended her first primary school lessons under a tree. Then the Tobago school complex was built. It still has minimum resources and no electricity but high hopes. Yes, Margaret was a very good pupil while she was here. She's now at KIST and I understand she's doing very well. By the way, we have got even a slogan here to our students and I think that's why they are doing well. We call them the ambassadors of hope. That's how we call our students. At the moment I was there, there was no library here and we used to read our own books only. I was dreaming to get higher and higher and to go to higher level. It required me a lot of effort. Even moving from one village to the city so so hard. Margaret's mother, a single mother refugee, sold a cow, her one and only possession in order to allow her daughter to study in the capital and pass a difficult entrance exam to KIST. There could be many more ambassadors of hope among these children if the school would come out of isolation one day. Now we don't have electricity and we hope the moment we get electricity we want to connect ourselves to the international world by having internet because it helps us in teaching and making research for teachers. So we are cut to the world but the moment we get electricity we want to be connected to the rest of the world. Although Africa is surrounded by girdle of optical fibres the development of data connection that is the internet is still intermittent in rural areas where it is too expensive to lay cables compared to the number of potential users. In these isolated areas commissioned by the Rwanda government one of Jonathan and KIST's former students is organising a programme of mobile training. The four buses equipped with 20 internet stations which travel from one village to the next to provide computer training to young people and farmers from the local communities. Just imagine like here we are really in a village it's almost three hours from Kigali but yet you can see people are using computers people are using computers and people are able to use the internet so we are seeing that it has not been just theoretical knowledge it's a practical knowledge that a student is able to pass also to the people in the village some of them maybe they will end up being farmers in the village so they have coffee, they have tea so having access to the ICT bus of course they will be able to compare the price of the coffee in town and also in the village so that business people cannot deceive them or cannot cheat them so they will know the price of the coffee. Knowing and having access to information is the secret to not being subjected to the tyranny of the strongest Kigali was unwilling to be left behind and tennis spring up all over the city contemporary totems of the connected world the capital of Rwanda is the city with the greatest penetration of broadband internet connection in the whole of the African continent President Paul Kagame has turned it into the safest place to do business in the heart of Africa partly thanks to the new technologies in a continent where growth in the use of mobile phones is twice that in the rest of the world the market is in enormous expansion but is likely to slip out of the hands of the Africans Margaret who learnt to read and write under a tree now chats online daily with the rest of the world the technological future of Africa is in the hands of young people like her provided that knowledge is shared with her at the end of this training activity we will distribute these five kits to five institutes represented here by the participants they come from different countries they come from Uganda, from Tanzania in our case from Zanzibar, from Mozambia many are Rwandan locals they will receive one of these kits for the rest of the world to be able to organise in turn each participant on the course will receive a copy of the guide for creating wireless networks produced with the contribution of the team and translated into 180 languages it will be accessible online, free of charge of course this is also when Carlo turns his hand to handiwork to make a container which will serve for transmission tests the free waves of the Wi-Fi will be used that is the narrow portion of electromagnetic spectrum which has evaded the market the piece of band not for sale as yet where information can travel freely and at low cost without touching the connector keep it here the fact of building antennas that can be trivial for a developed country instead the fact that a person is able to build his antenna and to show that it works it shows that technology is not something in the hands of the white strikers but it is really something that they can dominate and that they can really master when he is not travelling or at his home in Venezuela Hermano, together with his colleagues is based in Trieste in the eastern most corner of Italy a sea port where an icy wind called the Bora often blows in winter it is from here that the International Centre for Theoretical Physics or ICTP has propagated its free waves of knowledge for over 40 years the ICTP was born as a centre dedicated to theoretical physics and was the vision of the founder of the ICTP Abdul Salam the fact that there was no basic science like something that only rich countries could afford to face and this vision is still valid today because being lived in a developed country for more than 40 years I can testify that in fact the state of mind of these countries is that basic science is something that we don't need we just have to import the technologies of developed countries and try to adapt them to the conditions of the Third World The Trieste Centre is the only institute in the world which strives to share knowledge with researchers from all the continents regardless of their race, colour, language, religion or income so far it has supported more than 100,000 scientists from 180 countries through scholarships, workshops and conferences schools, affiliated centres, networks and visitors Thousands of these lessons and courses are freely accessible online and the centre considers the use of new communication technologies a fundamental tool for science dissemination worldwide Here the world's most promising physicists and mathematicians meet not only to teach but also to carry out high-level research The library and its aisles lined with books and padded with thoughts is watched over by the exponents of world science among whom is the founder of the centre the Pakistani-born noble laureate, Abdul Salam As well as being a great scholar Salam was also a very social and enthusiastic man With Paolo Budinich he succeeded in getting everyone to agree to the creation in 1964 of a centre where science could cross boundaries even those of the Iron Curtain and become the common heritage of mankind and not only of the most advanced countries What Trieste is trying to provide is the possibility that the man can still remain in his own country work there at the bulk of the year come to Trieste for three months attend one of the workshops one of the research sessions meet the people in his subject and then go back work there charged with his with new ideas for the rest of the year The most important point I've been stressing again and again we have been sold by well-meaning people and perhaps not so well-meaning people the idea that all we need is technology all we need is borrowed ideas take them back home the world supermarket of technology Lord Blackett my mentor at Imperial College that was his dictum there's a world supermarket of technology go and buy in it and take it back home that's just absurd technology simply does not take that way you have to have in every country a core of people with discrimination at the least if not more and that discriminating set of people is what we are trying to produce today the Cold War is over but Salam's spirit is still alive on the shores of the Adriatic Sea dialogue is an even more important value in the global world when no remote act is devoid of consequences for the rest of the system I started coming at ACTP since 1996 and through ACTP I made contact with people who helped me set up the first internet connectivity in the universities in DRC so ACTP has been very very useful for me in terms of setting up the network the academic network in DRC and also it's helped me also in finding contacts elsewhere in terms of my research work the courses in the laboratory never stop the important thing is to be networked to network and to keep updated the latest frontier of wireless communication is the internet of things not only man but also machines will be communicating more and more with each other wireless connected sensors will help prevent environmental disasters especially in developing countries the ones most at risk we are used to talking about internet where there are humans where there is a laptop where there is a computer but in 5 years or a couple of years the main inhabitants of the internet the members of the internet will be objects of this type when you set up a network of sensors then you need to have a network that is connected to the internet and you need to have a network that is connected to the internet and you need to have a network that is connected to the internet to be able to access these data from all over the world so we will use this wireless network that we have installed in Malawi to connect to hospitals to access sensors once created the wireless communication network can be used in various ways from health information to environmental information in Malawi several projects with sensors are being developed devised by local networks and sensors are being developed devised by local researchers who ICTP guided to excellence I first came here in 2006 and the main agenda for the workshop was to train us so that when we go home we should be able to deploy Wi-Fi links but for short distance because by then we had a telemedicine project furthermore in 2009 ICTP also gave me a scholarship to study for a master's degree in information technology with the specialization in telecommunication and networking in India currently there have been some challenges with the company that distributes water drinking water to homes and also to corporate institutes because they have storage tanks and over time people from the organization they move back and forth to collect readings of how much water is in the tank we want to deploy sensor network whereby this information on water levels could easily be transmitted using the GSM network so that these people they just have this information right in front of their machines without actually moving back and forth today Mayomiko teaches at the University of Blantar and has made wireless communication his life he is improving the living conditions of the community and has a great asset to his country the transmission of knowledge is made up of small gestures and will power which, organized together become long powerful waves that can change the destiny of many inhabitants on the planet