VOA Special English Development Report --- Setup Internet connection in Africa.

This is the VOA special English Development Report.
Some young engineers from the United states,  have brought the internet to several areas of rural Kenya.
Their idea was to connect the communities to the web by satellite.
but there was a problem, the areas are not even connected to Kenya's electrical power supply.
The answer: Solar pannels. Energy from the sun powers the satellite dish and the computers that link
the areas with the world outside. Kelly Moran, Joan Ervin and Tricia Donajkowski spent ten days in Kenya in November.
The women recently earned master's degrees in space systems engineering from the university of Michigan.
Another Engineer, Drew Hechathorn, did not go to Afica but work on parts of the project.
Kelly Moran says there was excitement when the team would arrive to connect communities to the internet,
people would sometime run along side the car carring the engineers to welcome them.
And Local residents would offer to help the team build the internet station. People now have access to
educational, medical and all kinds of other infomation. farmers for example, can  easy find weather, crop and price
information on line.
the project began back at the college of engineering in Ann Arbor, Michigan, in two thousand seven, that was when
twenty-five students in the class taught by Thomas Zurbuchen first talked about the idea.
the goal was to test whether the internet station could be setup, how much it casts and how long they could operate.
but the engineers also had to consider other things, like social needs. Students from the public health and
business school offered advice. The young engineers also had to design the equipment to survive the heat in Africa.
Professor Zurbuchen praises his former students for "making something work in a different climate far away from home".
Google paid for the final design of the equipment. the company is also supporting the cost of the satellite band width that needed
for the internet.
Google has invested in a new company that want to put up a system of satellites over Africa.
 the availability of more satellites would reduce the cost.
just 5 percent of Africans have the internet connections, The international Telecommunication Union says
One-third of Kenyans have mobile phones. But Mobile phones may or may not work well with the internet.
And that's the VOA special English Development Report.