So M-Farm is a low-tech app, relying on text messaging as its principal means of communication.

BBC: How much will technology boom change Kenya?

The successful transmission is a significant achievement -- which Renaissance painter Leonardo da Vinci would have surely appreciated -- because it marks "the first time anyone has achieved one-way laser communication at planetary distances, " said principal investigator David Smith of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

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This was because of an agreement between the UK and the US that the islands, of which Diego Garcia was the principal atoll, should be available to the US government for defence and communication purposes.

BBC: Evicted islanders' legal challenge begins