mariam: my family left timbuktu in 2012. we lived in a refugee camp in mauritania.life was very hard there. we didn't have a proper house, just a hut. it was very windy and very hot in the camp. it was hard. reporter: there are up to 100 children in each class. mariam's teacher abdoulaye bakaye says the returning refugees need extra special attention. abdoulaye: we have to work with them on two levels. on the one level we have to support them psychologically because so many of them are traumatized. on the other, we have to give them extra tutoring so they can catch up with the other pupils. many of the refugee children have missed an awful lot of school. reporter: there's not just a shortage of schools in timbuktu, but also of teaching staff. teachers have to contend with threats from the islamists who want to stop non-religious education. few children here are getting the chance to finish their schooling. mariam: i'm really happy. there's a proper school here with desks, teachers, and books. i'm so glad i have the chance to learn here. host: an 8000-kilometer-long

it's a familiar theme from toronto to timbuktu., this type of business transaction has come to define the age we live in, and its consequences, good and bad, are onlyjust beginning to shake down. jen copestake has been looking at some of the most influential thinking in what is being described as "surveillance capitalism". we freely give out our personal data every day through the apps on our phones, conversations with smart home assistants or other so—called smart devices like toothbrushes and vacuums. it seems like an inevitable and perhaps even cheap price to pay for living in a digitally connected world, giving us access to free services, like google‘s search and maps, and social media sites like facebook. but the data we are giving away for free about our everyday lives is very valuable, and its exploitation is the basis of a new economic paradigm which author shoshana zuboff calls "surveillance capitalism." she presented her book in cambridge, also known as the uk's silicon valley. what surveillance capitalism does, is it cla