In Peter Jairus’ Nairobi neighborhood, almost no one has a personal computer.
Mathare is one of the Kenyan capital’s largest slums. Buildings are constructed from sheets of corrugated metal and Internet access is rare, found only in places like schools or community centers. Even then, the connection can be spotty.
So when Jairus heard about Keepod, a cheap device that places a computer’s operating system on a small USB drive, he jumped at the idea. In April 2014, he met with Keepod’s creators, and six months later 60 of the devices were delivered to Mathare.
Jairus, a musician and youth activist, now runs a cybercafe where 30 to 40 people come daily to go online with their Keepods.
“The Keepod is very personal to everyone,” Jairus said. “People use it for studying, someone else is using it for YouTube, Facebook. This one is using it for research.
“It helps the community very much because a lot of people cannot afford the laptop, and 99 percent of the community could not have computer access.”
Based in Tel Aviv, the Keepod company aims to provide the world’s poorest countries with widespread computer and Internet access. By putting a modern computer operating system on affordable USB drives, users are able to connect to the Internet using older — and much less expensive — computers.
Founders Nissan Bahar and Franky Imbesi say their innovation will help bridge the so-called digital divide — the gap between those with and without regular computer access.
“People can access information to empower themselves,” Bahar said. “That means education, health care, personal growth, being able to read and see what’s going on around the world through a free medium.”
Attempts to bring Internet access to the world’s poorest people are hardly new. Nearly a decade ago, the United Nations backed an effort to create a $100 laptop through One Laptop Per Child, a project that aimed to bring inexpensive computers to developing nations.
But Bahar believes such efforts are impractical on a large scale because even $100 can be too expensive for citizens of developing countries. Keepods cost just $7 a pop, and by allowing users to store their personal information on the drive, people can use their individual Keepods to share a single computer, further depressing the cost of Internet access. Keepod has arranged to collect some of the tens of millions of computers discarded each year and ship them to schools and community centers in the developing world at a cost of under $100 each.
When they began Keepod in 2011, Bahar and Imbesi aimed to create a USB drive that kept all of a user’s data on a small external drive rather than on a computer’s internal hard drive. By keeping sensitive information off the computer, the product gave users an added layer of security.
In late 2013, Bahar and Imbesi realized their device could be a boon for those in the developing world who shared computers. Keepods can run a modern Android operating system even on older computers. And because every program will be run from the USB drive, viruses won’t infect whole computers.
“After a couple of years, my partner and I started seriously questioning what we were doing in life,” Bahar said. “How we could make a positive impact on the world around us instead of just making products?”
Keepod has already sold more than 30,000 USB drives. This year, Bahar hopes to vastly increase that number. About half of the company’s sales have been made through partnerships with NGOs; the rest are purchased directly from Keepod’s website. The device is also available through retailers.
College Socka Bongue, a 500-student high school in Cameroon, bought USB drives for its students last year along with 26 used computers. Philippe Socke, the executive director of a foundation that funds programs at the school, said the drives have allowed students to conduct research on the Internet for the first time.
After so many years of limited digital access, the transition has been a challenge. Socke said only about 5 percent of the students have computers at home.
“The administration was still relying on pads of paper and chalkboards,” Socke said. “Not having computer experience negatively affected the education. Our collaboration with Keepod literally allowed us to put computer access in the hands of every student.”
Still, Keepod has encountered some challenges in putting its product into the hands of those who would most benefit from it. Two of the five funded projects listed on Keepod’s website have fallen through because the company’s NGO partners could not afford it or faced infrastructure challenges.
Mike Dawson, CEO of Ustad Mobile, which installs educational programs on smartphones for children in the developing world, said that spotty electricity, plus the challenge of maintaining old computers, present obstacles to the wide deployment of Keepod technology.
Behar is undeterred. “We want to enable anyone to buy a Keepod and use it,” he said. “We want to be sustainable.”