There is excitement in the air at Connect Africa, as a range of intricately and painstakingly planned projects kick off in Zambia and surrounding countries.
Rural Zambia gets online
Connect Africa is at the cutting edge of technology, currently testing a novel solution in Africa to ensure internet coverage in rural areas. Partnering with leading technology providers in the United States of America, mobile networks and satellite specialists in Zambia, this project will be a first in Africa.
The technology provides a mobile communication signal for the benefit of the surrounding community, and tests are currently being set up in the remote Kafue National Park.
Clinic in Kafue
The signal will be accessible to a school, health clinic and conservation services, as well as at tourist facilities and the technology will showcasing an innovative, cost effective and sustainable solution to deep rural internet connectivity.
This quickly implemented technology negates the need for costly cell phone towers and provides effective transfer of information in rural areas. We will keep you updated on progress from the test site, bringing you the reaction of the surrounding community in interviews and pictures.
Challenges and the road ahead At Connect Africa we are committed to reporting our success but also the challenges that we face along the way. The years that we have dedicated to research, trying and testing our most innovative ideas, have also led to some realisations. Here are some of them:
Kafue National Park
Sustainability: An integral part of every project we undertake. Demand should slightly exceed service levels to ensure growth. It’s a key challenge to strike the right balance.
People: Trusted, self sufficient and motivated people in the field are essential to work in remote locations with minimum back-up. It requires a special person to be able to do this effectively.
Reliable and robust technology: There is a proliferation of advanced ICT’s out there, most of which wouldn’t last six months in the field. We use ruggedised equipment, basic technology and reliable service providers with rural credentials.
Apathy: ICT delivery is often more focused on money making opportunities in urban areas than services provision in rural communities. A combination of carrot – demonstrating revenue making opportunities – and stick – enforcing licence obligations and fees – is needed to motivate rural service delivery.
Kafue National Park
Tenacity: It takes three times longer than your longest projections to bring projects to fruition. We always stick with the project.
Financial control and monitoring: We make sure these are ongoing procedures. Being specialists in communication, we know the importance of monitoring our progress through feedback and tweaking a project accordingly if we need to.
Cockroaches:They love warm handsets, computers and servers.
Driving agricultural productivity – and talking about it
Connect Africa is privileged to be involved in the first phase of a major regional initiative supported by NEPAD to introduce a network of agricultural information exchange centers initially in Zambia and Malawi.
The Information and Community centers (ICC’s) as they are known, will be established around bulk grain storage, providing small scale farmers with vital agricultural information such as quality control, market prices, access to credit and trading facilities.
The storage facilities built specifically for the needs of small scale farmers will be set up in partnership with NEPAD (CAADP and the e-Africa Commission), Canadian based AMIS International Agriculture Consulting Inc, the USAID funded programme ACE and Connect Africa.
Facilitating cross border and regional trade as well as addressing food security, the link with commodity exchanges and establishment of information networks between small scale farmers and the end market is integral to the project design.
Intended as a model for the rest of Africa, the first bulk storage warehouse linked to the commodity exchange is already underway in Malawi.
Connect Africa is providing the ICT elements that link stakeholders in the project together, and we will be providing regular updates on progress from the field.