Inveneo

Modern Communications Aid Relief Efforts in Northern Uganda

Walk through one of the Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camps in Northern Uganda and you wonder how people could smile after more than 20 years of living as refugees. Weaving through the thousands of small mud huts, you see children playing, people preparing food, and small shop owners offering maize and charcoal alongside busy dirt paths. Yet despite the abject poverty and the atrocities of the civil war, most are quick to flash a smile.

For more than two decades of armed conflict, the only methods of communication the IDPs had with the rest of the world were transistor radios and word-of-mouth via bicycle or the occasional car or motorcycle. Gus Zuehlke of the BOSCO (Battery-Operated Systems for Community Outreach) Uganda Relief Fund saw the potential for communications to transform daily activities in the camps, where few phones and no power exist today. “The people affected by this war need a voice,” says Zuehlke.

Father Joseph Okumu of Caritas Catholic Charities in Gulu agreed. Organizationally, Father Okumu saw a critical need for communications among Caritas representatives and constituents in the camps, the Gulu office, and the outside world.

After a long search, BOSCO and Caritas chose Inveneo to provide a cost-effective, efficient, and sustainable technology solution. BOSCO and Inveneo quickly went to work to build a complete solar-powered wireless broadband communications and computing network for Caritas Catholic Charities that would serve their operations, schools, and clinics in camps as far as 70 kilometers away.

In November of 2006, Inveneo CEO Mark Summer and CTO Jeff Wishnie went to Gulu to perform a site survey. They quickly learned that each camp had different requirements. Large camps like Lacor needed more telephones (delivered via VoIP, or Voice over IP) than some of the smaller camps. Additional computers and phones were planned for healthcare clinics, schools, and offices for the Gulu Archdiocese.

To connect the different camps, Inveneo planned to use long-range Wi-Fi antennas mounted to existing water and radio towers. This would provide line-of-sight networking using solar-charged battery-powered systems.

In March 2007, Inveneo, BOSCO, and a local Ugandan IT Partner, Keyskills, working side-by-side, installed the network and connected eight Caritas offices, two medical clinics, and three schools. In April, 2007, John Alituma Nsambo, the State Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Minister in Uganda, sent the first email from the new system. “We intend to make every effort to support this project which gives a voice to our people that had been cut off from the outside world,” he said.

“Now that we have access to modern communications at the IDP camps, we can attract more development organizations to help this region recover faster from the effects of war,” said Father Joseph Okumu. “We’ve been able to get people closer to each other and closer to their government. I’m seeing Ugandans more united. This technology is bringing people together.”

Planning is currently underway for the second phase, which will extend the network to an additional 73 IDP camps. The goal is to turn these camps into trading centers after the conflict finally ends and people return to their farms. “We believe that providing affordable, sustainable communication technologies – fundamental solutions that so many of us take for granted – to the organizations which serve in these camps can change the lives of these people in dramatic ways,” said Laura Mellow, COO of Inveneo.