Mark Zuckerberg wants to bring Indonesia to the world via the Internet

Mark Zuckerberg wants to bring Indonesia to the world via the Internet and make millions more prosperous along the way.

Mr. Zuckerberg said the president-elect’s success in connecting to people in Indonesia made him  excited to visit. “It’s really been an unprecedented thing around the world and it’s an honor to be here and witness it firsthand how’s that happening,” the young billionaire said after meeting Mr. Widodo at City Hall.

“Getting businesses here on the Internet is one of the biggest levers that the government has for growing the economy and it’s one of the biggest ways we at Facebook feel we can help grow the economy,” Mr. Zuckerberg said.

Solving those problems represents a huge opportunity for Indonesia and for Facebook. Currently 69 million of Indonesia’s 250 million citizens have active Facebook accounts, and Mr. Zuckerberg admits that it will benefit Facebook to see more users in Indonesia get online.

Through Internet.org, Facebook is working with local telecoms to offer free services, such as health and education information, basic financial services, and chat apps like Facebook messenger, over the Internet.

“There are places where you travel and you can’t do basic things like take a photo and share it with someone else or upload it,” Mr. Zuckerberg said, adding later: “There are all these different parts of culture and innovation that the world could have from Indonesia that we are being robbed of because a lot of people don’t have a way to share that.”