As part of the “Connecting the Unconnected: Supporting community networks and other community-based connectivity initiatives” project being implemented by APC in partnership with Rhizomatica, Solomon Okot Nono from BOSCO Uganda, a member organisation in the project’s peer learning community, recently visited the Zenzeleni community network in South Africa with the support of a community networks travel exchange grant. In this blog post, Solomon shares his reflections on the valuable mutual learning made posible by this exchange.
It was my first time to travel on a long-distance flight. It was a nice experience to see the beautiful view of Johannesburg and experience winter for the first time in my life in Mthatha. Reaching Mthatha airport, we were welcomed by Sol, who later drove us through Mthatha to Mankosi where the Zenzeleni community network is located.
Zenzeleni cooperative members gave us a very warm welcoming environment with Mama Gladys Cigcau taking the lead, along with Jay, Pateka, David Nkozi, Lekesan Mazazana and others members. I realised that as Africans we share a lot in common, like they own grass thatch houses, cattle, goats, although their sheep look a bit different from the ones we have in our region.
The cooperatives also plan to buy tents to be rented out to support income generation since there are many community events in their areas. It is something that some of the youth ICT centers that BOSCO Uganda has connected is doing; that is, the Acan Dano ICT site in Oyam District, Northern Uganda.
Their internet network from Walter Sizulu University located in Mthatha through their Education and Research Network (TENET) to the villages in Mankosi is great, using point-to-point wireless connection. What I liked was the fact that they are using the same type of Ubiquiti network radios with good speed that we also use for our backbone connection at BOSCO Uganda. When viewing the equipment that they use, I was excited to see the ones that I normally use at BOSCO Uganda, like LiteBeam for backbone and RocketDish for point-to-point, but also, through the Pathfinder grant that Zenzeleni received from APC, they are in the process of upgrading the backbone links using MikroTik metal wireless point-to-point radios which will give them better throughput and limit interference from other communication devices within their areas of operation.
Network radios on the tower and houses being used by Zenzeleni community network.
It is amazing how the cooperative members run the network by selling vouchers and also encouraging their children to learn the technical installations to support the sustainability of the network. With a very organised leadership structure, I credit the contribution and involvement of women like Mama Gladys Cigcau, Pateka and others who are working so hard to bring more women into the cooperative and also encouraging them to use the internet. The members hold monthly meetings to plan on which direction they should move forward and get funds. The network helps the members to connect to one another and their children to know the world.
The network also helps the cooperative’s members to grow their businesses and attract interest.
Zenzeleni has a qualified technician who helps in building their network and who comes from the community; that is Jay. With Sol supporting the resource mobilisation and management, the fact that Jay comes from the community makes it easy for him to explain the technology in the local language so that the elders of the cooperative and the community can easily understand.
I was inspired by the use of smartphones among the members of the cooperative, which have greatly motivated them to use the internet more; the use of a WhatsApp group for communicating with the clients is something that BOSCO Uganda can adopt to ease communication with clients. I was also inspired by the commitment of the elderly people within the cooperatives, who are taking on the challenge to use the internet in a productive way and encouraging the young ones to join them in growing the network coverage.
In terms of implementing their sustainability model, Zenzeleni has moved ahead to implement the voucher system throughout the entire network, while BOSCO Uganda is still piloting it in one ICT Centre. From what I saw, Zenzeleni is doing well and it is something BOSCO Uganda can expand to the entire network.
They have a very strong support team, with members like Tommy Easttel, supporting the management of voucher issuing, the adoption of the new UniFi AC Mesh and expansion of the network, and graphing and other network management tools. This is something BOSCO Uganda can benefit from by learning through the experience sharing with Zenzeleni. The use of UniFi AC Mesh has greatly improved their connection in the villages.
I was also inspired to learn about new software which can be helpful for the operations of BOSCO Uganda, for example, The Dude 3.6 and osTicket.
Some of the challenges
Like most community networks, Zenzeleni faces the challenge of funding in case of equipment breakdown. Currently, Zenzeleni depends on equipment through donations, but the revenue raised from selling the vouchers will be used to buy that equipment in future and the current collection can cover the bandwidth cost.
There are few hands to technically maintain the network because many of the community members are elderly, and that is why they are getting youths on board to support in maintaining the network.
Most people in the area with higher degrees, who could have supported the growth of the network, want to get a job and so they go to the city, leaving it very difficult for them to join such a rural community network like Zenzeleni. This is the same story with BOSCO Uganda, whereby trained youths leave the ICT centres and move to urban areas for better jobs, making sustainability a very big challenge.
I learned that Zenzeleni is now adopting the approach used by BOSCO Uganda of getting interested youths from the community, training them slowly, letting them to learn through mistakes, and making them work for the community network as volunteers. If the network grows, then you start giving them salaries.
There are also challenges of signal interference from other devices, especially in the urban area where the backbone picks up the connection which is sent to the villages. Secondly, there is the village’s interference which comes from mobile phones users, because the 2.4 Ghz frequency is also used by phones.
Unreliability of electricity is still a great challenge and that is why Zenzeleni is adopting the use of solar power, to help create reliability. This is something that BOSCO Uganda has successfully managed to do over the years.
Zenzeleni is using a solar system in some few areas for their main points, but there is evidence of a lack of technical skills in sizing the solar system. I was privileged to support them by showing Jay the process of sizing solar systems and the types of connection, since they currently have challenges converting the 12V system to 24V, and some of their equipment uses 24V. They currently use a DC-DC 12V-24V converter, but it sends low power which cannot power all the equipment, hence most of the time the radios go off. Now this visit has provided them with a solution, through changing the system voltage by changing the system wiring and adding one battery onto the system to change it from a 12V system into a 24V system.
The geographical terrain/landscape of the areas where Zenzeleni is operating is fairly good, with hills but with clear line of sight to most places. This makes it easy to create links and expand the network faster. Secondly, this favours the use of a mesh network, which Zenzeleni is deploying using UniFi AC Mesh access points. It is something that BOSCO Uganda can replicate in the rural trading centres where people are fairly closely populated.
I learned that for the sustainability of a community network to be realised, there is a need to work with the different people in the community. For example, Zenzeleni connects every interested person, hotels, schools, the hospital, banks and others. Again, this is something BOSCO Uganda should explore and expand its customer base. It can help to raise a good amount of income that can support sustainability. This means BOSCO Uganda should conduct awareness raising with the regulators, so that it can be allowed to expand its operations to other institutions within the community, and for this to be achieved, BOSCO Uganda needs to increase its bandwidth capacity to accommodate the new additions, for good speed.
Zenzeleni has two relay towers which connect from Walter Sizulu University, which then send the connection to the villages in Mankosi through point-to-point connection, which is something BOSCO Uganda is using. What I learned from this visit is that BOSCO Uganda and Zenzeleni share a lot in common in terms of their network structure and the challenges that they face as a community network.
My hope is to see more collaboration and support between BOSCO Uganda and Zenzeleni to see how the ICT centres in the rural areas of northern Uganda that have BOSCO Uganda’s network can start operating as cooperatives, and to see Zenzeleni start to install solar systems to help run the network, especially the backbone links, like how BOSCO Uganda is currently operating its network completely off-grid.
The team that visited Zenzeleni –Memory, Solomon, Immaculate and Josephine – looking back at their experience of the trip and how much they have learned from the people of the Zenzeleni Community Network.