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Tackling Africa’s digital divide

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Innovations in ‘sustainable’ photonics technologies such as free-space optical links and solar-powered equipment provide developing countries with new cost-effective opportunities for deploying future-proof telecommunication networks.

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Fig. 1: The digital divide.
Fig. 2: A proposed sustainable network.
Fig. 3: Comparative sustainability.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the EPSRC Global Challenges Research Fund, the South African National Research Foundation, the South African Research Chair Initiative of the Department of Science and Technology, the National Basic Research Program of China (2014CB340004), the Royal Society-Newton Advanced Fellowship, the programme for Huazhong University of Science and Technology Academic Frontier Youth Team, the National Research Foundation and the Royal Academy of Engineering for their support.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Glasgow, Glasgow, UK

    Martin P. J. Lavery, Mojtaba Mansour Abadi & Anthony E. Kelly

  2. University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, UK

    Ralf Bauer

  3. University of Southampton, Southampton, UK

    Gilberto Brambilla & Radan Slavík

  4. University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa

    Ling Cheng, Mitchell A. Cox, Angela Dudley, Bienvenu Ndagano, Carmelo Rosales-Guzmán, Filippus S. Roux & Andrew Forbes

  5. Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, Pretoria, South Africa

    Angela Dudley & Kobus Roux

  6. University of Aston, Birmingham, UK

    Andrew D. Ellis

  7. Nokia Bell Labs, Holmdel, NJ, USA

    Nicolas K. Fontaine

  8. Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light and Institute of Optics, Information and Photonic, Friedrich-Alexander-Universitat Nürnberg, Erlangen, Germany

    Christoph Marquardt

  9. Square Kilometre Array, Johannesburg, South Africa

    Selaelo Matlhane

  10. University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, South Africa

    Francesco Petruccione

  11. University of Padova, Padova, Italy

    Filippo Romanato

  12. National Metrology Institute of South Africa, Pretoria, South Africa

    Filippus S. Roux

  13. Wuhan National Laboratory for Optoelectronics, School of Optical and Electronic Information, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, Hubei, China

    Jian Wang

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  1. Martin P. J. Lavery
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  2. Mojtaba Mansour Abadi
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  7. Angela Dudley
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  8. Andrew D. Ellis
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  9. Nicolas K. Fontaine
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  10. Anthony E. Kelly
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  12. Selaelo Matlhane
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  13. Bienvenu Ndagano
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  14. Francesco Petruccione
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  15. Radan Slavík
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  16. Filippo Romanato
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  17. Carmelo Rosales-Guzmán
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  18. Filippus S. Roux
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  19. Kobus Roux
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  20. Jian Wang
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  21. Andrew Forbes
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Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Martin P. J. Lavery or Andrew Forbes.

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Lavery, M.P.J., Abadi, M.M., Bauer, R. et al. Tackling Africa’s digital divide. Nature Photon 12, 249–252 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41566-018-0162-z

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