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EgyptAir Debris Examined; Clinton and Trump Spar over Guns; Drone Strikes Against Terrorist Leaders Discussed; Marketplace Africa. Aired 2-2:30a ET

Aired May 22, 2016 - 02:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[02:00:08] NATALIE ALLEN, CNN NEWS ANCHOR: A scant few belongings and plane parts, all that investigators and families have so far to tell the story of EgyptAir Flight 804. What else is needed to explain the jet's fate, we'll look into that.

Hillary Clinton slams Donald Trump over his stance on gun control as she addresses mothers who have lost their children to gun violence. And a field day for football fans in Europe Saturday, we'll bring you the scores from a string of cup finals. It's all ahead here on CNN Newsroom. We're live from Atlanta. Thanks for joining us. I'm Natalie Allen.

The sun is up over the Mediterranean now where researchers are in their fourth day of combing waters for the EgyptAir plane. So far, they've found very little wreckage of life vests, of scarf, plane seat, other debris and human remains. Investigators are still in the dark about what happened and hope the plane's so-called black boxes will be found soon to bring some answers. French aviation officials say the plane sent automated messages indicating smoke near the cockpit confirming the data obtained by CNN seen in these screen shots. The jet was heading from Paris to Cairo when it dropped off radar early Thursday morning and crashed into the sea. Our Ian Lee is in Cairo, he has more on the investigation.

IAN LEE, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: What investigators are looking at right now is the information that came from the airplane minutes before it crashed as sensors were detecting smoke in the avionics and laboratory. Could that mean a fire? Possibly. Could it be something else? They don't know at this moment. So, to really get a whole picture of what happened, investigators tell us they still need to find the fuselage and the data recorder. So those are still in the Mediterranean. They have not been able to locate them at this moment, but we are seeing parts of the plane being recovered. There has been pieces of carpet, blanket, a pillow and remember, this was a red eye flight. So these items could have possibly been in use when the crash happened. There was also a life jacket as well as a purse but these are small pieces of a bigger puzzle of what actually happened. Rescue crews are also saying they found body parts and for family here Cairo, that is crucial. They want to have their loved ones recovered so that they can give them a proper burial. But Egyptian officials are saying that that still could take weeks as they need do DNA testing to make sure the remains get to the right family. So, the big theories right now, two of them, could it be terrorism or could it mechanical? Investigators still don't know. The Egyptian officials have said that they're leaning more towards terrorism but they haven't ruled out anything yet. This investigation is still very much underway and ongoing, Ian lee in Cairo.

ALLEN: And joining us for CNN Newsroom next hour for a live report from Ian in Cairo with all the very latest, that's 8:00 a.m. London, 3:00 p.m. in Hong Kong.

Earlier, I got some insight into the crash from Alan Diehl. He's a former accident investigator with the National Transportation Safety Board.

ALAN DIEHL, FORMER AIR FORCE AND NTSB ACCIDENT INVESTIGATOR: Natalie, there's one other thing I haven't heard anybody talk about on television and that is the solid state oxygen generator as located in that forward laboratory. In 2011, the FAA ordered all U.S. aircraft to remove those oxygen generators for fear that a terrorist could use those as a weapon. These burn very hot and could be dangerous in the hands of the wrong person. They're literally located I believe in the ceiling of the laboratory on that air bus. And I don't know if the European authority, some of them did this, but I don't know if the Egyptians removed those portable -- not portable, but the fixed oxygen generators from the laboratories. Since they haven't done that, I'm sure like the Egyptian officials to acknowledge that.

ALLEN: We'll look into that. There have also been electrical problems with window anti ice heaters in A320s. In 2003, the U.S. federal aviation officials required wind shields replaced in all A320s in the U.S. It's not known whether Egypt did that as well. Two U.S. officials say, the top Afghan Taliban leader has likely been killed in a drone strike. Mullah Mansour was targeted while traveling in Pakistan near the Afghanistan boarder. The White House is waiting for confirmation of the death. Chief U.S. Security Correspondent Jim Sciutto says killing Mullah Mansour may not necessarily disrupt Taliban operations.

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN CHIEF U.S. SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: So you see leaders taken out by drone strikes in many countries frequently whether it's in Iraq and Syria or in Somalia, in Yemen, in Afghanistan and Pakistan. And these groups will very quickly pick another successor, another leader in their place and the groups will go on and sometimes they won't be weakened.

[02:05:17] They will continue. The hope here is that the leader is essential enough to the operation that it will at least affect operations for some time. But no one's under the impression, even U.S. officials that by killing this man that it's the end of his organization. They know that this is a battle that might take years and the fact is, you have a strike like this but at the same time, the Taliban has gained enormous amounts of territory in recent months and years and they've been able to carry out numerous attacks in and around the country, Pakistan and Afghanistan with great effect.

ALLEN: A Top U.S. commander made an unannounced visit to Northern Syria Saturday. General Joseph Votel met with special ops troops and the local forces, they're helping train to fight Isis. The visit was kept under wraps and CNN was the only television news team to accompany him. Votel is the highest ranking U.S. military official to travel into Syria during the ongoing war there.

In the U.S. presidential race, Hillary Clinton on Saturday blasted Republican rival Donald Trump on guns. Speaking at a Florida event, Clinton called Trump's ideas on firearm s dangerous.

HILLARY CLINTON, (R) PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Donald Trump said that in his very first hour as president, heaven forbid, he would overturn president Obama's actions to strengthen background checks. Remember, president Obama took those steps after the massacres at Mother Emmanuel in Charleston and Sandy Hook Elementary in New Town, Connecticut. Then Mr. Trump went further. He said that also on his first day in office, he'd mandate that every school in America allow guns in classrooms. Every school, he said. That idea isn't just way out there, it's dangerous. We are smart enough and strong enough as a nation to figure out how to protect the rights of responsible gun owners while keeping guns out of the hands of domestic abusers, other violent criminals, gang members, who's severely mentally ill. I know we can do this and despite all the political noise, we are actually united on this issue.

ALLEN: Clinton's comments followed those by Trump at a gun lobby event on Friday. Trump accused the democratic frontrunner Ms. Clinton of wanting to abolish gun rights.

Organizers say at least 10,000 demonstrators of Lima, Peru in Saturday demanding gay rights and married equality. Peru does not recognize any form of same-sex unions. Bills to grant same-sex marriages have previously been proposed there and later shelved.

In Costa Rica, the Turrialba volcano near San Jose have had its most powerful eruption in years. Volcanic ash and smoke continues to spew towards the capital. Following Friday's eruptions, the activity has caused flight delays and elevated health hazards throughout this area and our meteorologist, Derrick Van Dam joins us now with more about the effects of this volcano.

DEREK VAN DAM, CNN INTERNATIONAL WEATHER ANCHOR: Not good. It's very unhealthy for air quality in and around that general area. In fact, there was an evacuation zone ordered for about a five-kilometer radius around the volcano. We had volcanic ash spewed about five kilometers into the atmosphere. You can imagine what that means for airlines and check this out. A suburb of San Jose, the capital in Costa Rica, this is Guadalupe, Costa Rica. They are sweeping up ash on the ground as this ash just traveled well, several kilometers and made its way into this region. Loud explosions heard by residents are on the volcano for the third consecutive day. Very active volcano to say the least, the volcanic activity actually began on Wednesday. Take a look at some of the images coming out of this region. And you can see some of the individuals wearing masks, well, that's been recommended by authorities there. As you can imagine, that the air quality with ash across this region just continues to decline. Here are some farmers trying to evacuate the general five-kilometer radius that I was talking about. Just to put this in perspective, we're zooming in to central Costa Rica. There's San Jose and there's the Turrialba volcano. It's about 50 kilometers to the east of the capital city. [02:10:2] Now, we're going to transition to an area of the world

that's just been struck by a severe cyclone. This is Bangladesh and check out just how low-lying this particular area is. This is the concern of the typography across this area, right round zero feet in terms of sea level. So, you can imagine that it gets inundated by any amount of coastal storm surge and in fact, authorities there said storm surge with this land falling cyclone was about 0.9 meters to 1.2 meters above the average tidal wave that they would experience here. And of course, that caused quite a bit of damage and unfortunately some fatalities as well. Get a load of these rainfall totals in excess of 450 millimeters in parts of India, upwards of 350 millimeters for parts of Bangladesh. That led to the flooding scenes across this region. Fortunately, the cyclone is starting to dissipate but that doesn't mean that we're out of the woods just yet. More shower and thunderstorm activity as the system continues to rotate about the border of Bangladesh and Myanmar, sudaka, southward into Yangon. That's where we have the potential for another 52, even 150 millimeters of rainfall that could lead to more scenes like this. Take a look at the wind and the flooding along the coast there. This is fresh visuals, or actually it's seen in Bangladesh and you can see just the destructive power of this cyclone, Natalie.

ALLEN: All right, thank you very much, Derek. I know you'll continue to watch it for us.

And Saturday was quite a day for football with some big-time clubs playing a major final throughout Europe. Manchester United won the FA cup in thrilling fashion. They tied the match late to fourth extra time and is the game winner while playing a man down.

Over in France, Paris Saint-Germain beat Marseille, 4 to 2 to capture the French cup. But it's a bittersweet victory with their star striker heading for free agency. In Berlin, Bayern Munich took the German cup from rival Dortmund. It's Bayern's 18th German cup and the third year in a row that Dortmund has fallen just short.

And finally, Hibernian FC won their first Scottish cup in 114 years. Fans rushed the pitch afterwards. Who can doubt them for wanting to do that, have been breaking one of the goal posts? Police got things under control, so Hibs could accept their trophy. Some glean there for you. Thanks for watching, "Market Place Africa" is next.

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[02:15:14] ELENI GIOKOS, CNN AFRICA CORRESPONDENT: Welcome to the special edition of "Market Place Africa." I'm Eleni Giokos and I'm in Kigali, Rwanda. Well, for the very first time the city hosts the world economic forum on Africa. Now this year's theme is connecting Africa's resources through digital transformation. And despite the increased use of mobile phones across the continent, Africa only has a 20% internet penetration. Now, if you travel a lot into the continent, there's one thing you always look for is Wi-Fi and you'll be surprised where you can find reliable and fast internet in Kigali. I went to find out more.

Here in downtown Kigali, one of the most active areas is the bus station. For many, this is the best way to reach their destination and recently, these buses have been equipped to do more than just get from point A to B. Now, the city has been rolling out these smart buses. Not only do you get free Wi-Fi but it's apparently a 4G network. They've also been rolling out these tap and go cards. So, I'm armed with my cellphone and my card and I'm about to test it out.

Hello, how you doing? Using the tap and go card to pay the bus fare was pretty easy and similar to what you would find in cities like London or New York. But the 25-year-old entrepreneur who created the cashless system says it's the data analytics behind it that makes the difference.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We had to properly think about it to cope up with the management system for Rwanda. How do we route the bus? How do we make sure that whatever bus is on a certain route, this actually speaks for the number of people.

GIOKOS: But it kind of says the cards are used in more than 200 buses and has reduced waiting time. Pretty cool, but I was anxious to test out the Wi-Fi. All right, so I'm in, I'm connected to the internet and I'm about to watch a YouTube video. We'll see how it goes. The video loaded quickly and played uninterrupted. Probably, until now, one of the best networks are connected too in Africa including South Africa. And I'm on a bus and we're driving around Kigali. So it passed my streaming video test but how about a video call? Rwanda's use and ICT minister was planning to join me for the ride. So, I tried to FaceTime him before he got on. Hey, minister, how are you doing? I'm good, I'm testing your 4G network on your bus. The minister says almost 500 buses off of 4G Wi-Fi and every new bus will be equipped with it. It's part of what the government calls the "it's SMART Rwanda initiative".

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We believe that's the future is smart, so that anything that is done should be dramatically improved and transformed using ICT.

GIOKOS: Many members of the global business community were in Kigali to discuss just that at the world economic forum on Africa.

As we're talking today about initial transformation, technology is very much at the heart of what we can do to really harness the power of growth and the next opportunity that we see on the continent. At that cloud computing, being at the core of it, which is that how do you unleash the power of government E services and allow governments to drive productivity?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Retail, consumer products, energy are the sectors where it's going to impact the most and it's not as if it's creating a new product or new service. It's basically taking existing business but finding ways to automate it. Make it cheaper and make it more competitive with the imports that are predominantly here today.

GIOKOS: Erickson partners with the Rwandan Government for the SMART Rwanda initiative. The head of Sub-Saharan Africa is bullish on Africa's broadband connectivity. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Mobile broadband network is one of the biggest facilitators for transformation. Now, it might have been so that Africa has a little bit fewer mobile broadband subscription currently about 150 million which indicates a penetration of maybe around 15- 20%. That we think is likely to go up to 800 million by a little of 2021. And that means that you have an 80% penetration at a time. So, while the speed and the uptake might have been the start point, might have been a little bit later, the uptake is for, higher that in many other markets in the state.

GIOKOS: But there is a lot of ground work that still needs to be done in order for Africa to take that leap.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You have to embark on all fronts at the same time. Obviously, we need to create more infrastructure. It's an absolute must. Physical movement of goods is critical. But at the same time, use all the means of technology possible, and not just in terms of production or services, but also in terms for education, for health, for agriculture.

[02:20:15] GIOKOS: Hey, how are you doing? Good, you won't believe who I'm with. I'm with the minister who use an ICT.

And back on the bus, I continued to test the 4G network. I even Facetimed with my sister in South Africa. The youth and ICT minister hopes that soon, you won't need to be on a bus to get this level of service.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You need to make sure that connectivity is not seen as a privilege for the few, it's available to everyone that individuals, schools, government offices, travelers, everyone is connected.

GIOKOS: Should we do this? Get it on Twitter? Digital transformation will likely be a trending topic on the continent. As long as project like these, SMART buses, serve as an example of what's possible.

Coming up after the break, we'll be hearing more from Fredrik Jejdling, head of sub-Saharan Africa at Ericsson. Stay with us.

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ALLEN: Thank you very much for joining us on CNN. Much appreciated for your time. Around 40 percent of global mobile traffic users and Erickson network of sorts. We're talking about 1 billion people essentially. Put that into the African context for us.

FREDRIK JEJDLING, HEAD OF SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA AT ERICSSON: Sure, you know, we've been in Africa for quite some time actually and we started here 120 years back between the Nairobi and Cape Colony we installed our first fixed line-switching in there. And over the time, then we developed and right now, we are one of the biggest providers of the mobile telephony networks, 2G, 3G and now we're launching 4G networks across the big networks in Africa as well. In addition to that, we worked with the industry and society which we are talking about here in Rwanda. And we also transformed ourselves more into becoming an ICT company, in the sense that we work on transforming the IT landscape operator and other customers as well.

GIOKOS: Do you think your consumers on the continent, the one thing that you basically hear, whether you're in South Africa or Nigeria or even Rwanda is internet speed, access to Wi-Fi, access to data at a relatively affordable price? You're talking about rolling out 4G network. Tell me about the price points there.

JEJDLING: No, I think the price points, I mean, that gets us in a competitive environment, the two-player, three four operators facing you know, competitive pricing on the market. I think, the biggest sort of hurdle for uptake in any case is not so much the price point but such they're important. But the most important thing is the pricing of the handset and the reliability of the cheap, affordable, let's just say, handsets for the masses.

GIOKOS: What's fascinating specifically in the East African region, you know, mobile transactions have totally revolutionized the notion of banking beyond banks. What kind of trends are you seeing in the space?

JEJDLING: Now, I think I will continue very strongly. We have 700 million unbanked Africans today and they need to find a way to enter into society and that's typically, so on the first step of being financially included. So I think we only see the beginning of that and I think it's partly that, partly also that there's very little bricks and mortar type of banks industry in the countries and some of the countries at least, vastly different depending on what country it is, of course. So I think we're going to see 700 million unbanked people in Africa that needs to be included. I think that's a great opportunity.

GIOKOS: You're also working with a lot of the ICT companies, the likes of MTN as well is embarking on new projects for the likes of Ghana. How much business are you seeing on the ground at the moment?

JEJDLING: No, we will see, you know, we report the numbers in Africa and then last year, we've had about 10.1 billion sec in business here in Africa.

[02:25:09] We worked with the most of the mobile operators. MTN is a very important customer to us as mentioned. And we worked with them on 3G, 4G. We worked with them on mobile money. And also we did a couple of the increase and progress around CSR and nature that was linked to ways to take back electronic ways together. So, we do a lot of things with the partners. Beyond the little bit, the sort of normal business that we do but also interesting (inaudible) activities.

GIOKOS: It's fascinating when we talk about, you know, the continent as a whole. We keep on talking about the commodities. We're talking about getting into value-added sectors and processing and so forth. But on the other end of the spectrum, there's this whole thing about the digital transformation of the continent. Some say that it's just too optimistic that we can't skip certain steps, understand that we can leapfrog, not only old technologies but perhaps even create new technologies. Do you think that we're starting to see the rise of that?

JEJDLING: I think Africa first soon would be in a place where we don't have to see ourselves cashing out. But we'll actually be - And that means of course that we will accelerate faster. But; let's not be, we have to also understand our components like education, training and that needs to go into -- It's not just about putting a technology out there. It's a lot about the pricing, affordability, training, language, more practical consumer (inaudible) things that need to come into play as well. So, I think, I'm very positive about it happening on the medium long-term. But then I think it will catch up faster. But it's a lot of facilitators that needs to come into place for it to happen.

GIOKOS: So what's fascinating about the continent is that most people have access to some kind of phone, right? And even in Africa, you find phones with two or three slots for your SIM card within the phone, access to cheap devices. Do you think that this is going to revolutionize?

JEJDLING: Well, I think what we're seeing now is that there's been multiple 2G handsets, so GSM handsets have been quite prevalent. What is coming now is of course more affordable, 3G, 4G LTE type of phones. And that offers half the difference in because then you can actually start accessing the internet in a relevant way. And I think those price points are starting to come down. Meaning, there are a lot more people who start getting up. And then as I said before, we see a growth potentially, 150 million subscription up to 800 million by 2021 and that's to be of course to be accompanied by a lot of smart phones.

GIOKOS: Thanks so very much for joining us on this special edition of "Market Place Africa." Don't forget to take a look at our website and well as our Facebook page for all the updates you need on the show. From Eleni Giokos here in Kigali, I'll see you next time in the market place.

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