South Africa-based Guyanese telecommunications engineering specialist Mortimer Hope, 57, has represented his adopted homeland and the continent of Africa in his area of expertise at regional and international forums for more than three decades and is now engaged in a global project to connect the unconnected through the internet by placing unmanned aircraft in the stratosphere.
Earlier this month Hope was the only African speaker on the panel on Connecting the Unconnected at the United Nations Internet Governance Forum (IGF) in Kyoto, Japan.
“This is an exciting project we are working on,” Hope said, adding that the plan was to use unmanned aircraft in the stratosphere to beam cellular signals back to earth so that cell phones could be used in any part of the world, including the jungles of Guyana.
