There are nearly 4bn people offline around the world, and nearly 250mn of them are in the MENA region. This represents a huge untapped resource for humanity and a tremendous social and financial opportunity for the telecoms industry. However, it is difficult both practically and economically to connect the unconnected. The offline population is disproportionately female, rural and poor and, while connecting them is of vital importance to global development, the illiterate cannot use mobile data and the elderly all too often never learn, so expensive solutions are unviable. That is why infrastructure sharing, as championed by towercos, is so important.
