Facebook Inc is launching a mobile app that gives users in Zambia free access to a handful of online services on mobile phones, broadening an effort to boost Internet usage in underdeveloped countries.
The Internet.org app will offer, in partnership with wireless operator Airtel, more than a dozen services including online encyclopedia Wikipedia, websites devoted to weather, job listings and health information, as well as Facebook's own social network and messaging service.
This development is very important because it again underlines the important role that Facebook is playing in the march of freedom. We increasingly seeing the old ways of old African leaders challenged. Many have focused on controlling the news media and clamping down on access to internet.
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