How Better Connectivity Can Help Dadaab, the World’s Largest Refugee Camp

1. Posted by Inveneo on June 6, 2012 in the categories: News, Projects, Relief

The worst drought and famine in more than 60 years have threatened the livelihood of 9.5 million people in the Horn of Africa since early 2011. Refugees from Somalia continue to arrive in Kenya by the tens of thousands, making the Dadaab complex now the world’s largest refugee camp ever with almost 500,000 counted and perhaps as many as 100,000 more unregistered.

UNHCR (the UN High Commission for Refugees) is the lead agency responding to this crisis, and many major humanitarian agencies including Care, Save the Children and the International Rescue Committee are operating in Dadaab providing critical services such as food distribution, housing, sanitation and medical relief. The teams are stretched to their limits. To make matters even more difficult Al Shabaab, the Somali-based terrorist group, recently escalated its activities in and around the camps, making the operations more dangerous for the refugees and the agencies providing vital assistance.

How Better Connectivity Can Help

In the fall of 2011, Inveneo was invited by NetHope, a consortium of 34 member Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs), and the USAID Global Broadband and Innovations Program to identify opportunities to bring better, more reliable Internet and interagency communications to the many humanitarian agencies working in the region. Inveneo and NetHope mobilized teams to travel to arid northeast Kenya, to assess the situation in detail, and to determine what could be accomplished.

On the ground in Dadaab, it was clear from the United Nations (UN) and NGO community that bringing incremental, reliable and affordable Internet access would lead to better overall communications, coordination and security thereby increasing the staff capacity to deliver critical and life-sustaining food, housing, sanitation and medical care. Inveneo, working with Cisco’s TacOps could install and configure a local high-speed network, the Dadaab organizations could immediately begin to collaborate and share information more effectively. An existing UNHCR-led network initiative for smaller NGOs and community centers needed to be reviewed substantively to ensure that any new networking designs would be compatible, complimentary and synergistic.

NetHope, Inveneo and TacOps obtained commitments from Cisco to donate equipment, and from USAID and UNHCR to provide funding. It was determined that there were two major areas where Inveneo could bring technical and strategic expertise to make a real difference.

1. First, we initiated and led a strategic business and engineering partnership with Orange, a local Kenyan mobile and landline telecommunications service provider, to extend new data services into the Dadaab compound using our long-distance WiFi solutions. NetHope aggregated the demand for the new service among the Dadaab aid community, and we secured agreement from Orange to a preferred pricing arrangement as well as to adequate initial and ongoing capacity. Orange is making their highly reliable Internet connectivity available by providing backhaul from their existing Dadaab tower to international fiber networks. We designed a detailed, local distribution network and training plan to enable Orange and prequalified Dadaab IT staff to quickly grasp, support and connect to the Inveneo-designed access solutions.
2. Second, Inveneo and TacOps would co-design a high-speed network to connect the Dadaab agencies locally and to enable bandwidth-intensive, intra-agency collaboration technologies like file sharing, video conferencing designed by Cisco and voice over IP telephony applications. This collaboration network, DadaabNET, would also provide a Cisco router-based failover configuration to switch agency traffic to a 4-Mbps, UNHCR-provided satellite system in the event of primary connection failure. This effort involved IP addressing and configuration support from both Cisco and Inveneo as well as consultative engineering support from UNHCR and the Dadaab Aid Agency IT staff.

Status and Results

Inveneo’s work was successfully completed in March 2012. During the week of March 12, we trained in-country technical teams from Orange, from the Dadaab-based NGO technical staff, and from our local Inveneo Certified ICT Partner Setright. Orange hosted the classroom training session in Nairobi that provided hands-on instruction on long distance WiFi. We offered our custom practical curriculum in both network design and installation. Then the training moved outside to physically install equipment on buildings and way up on an Orange telecommunications tower. Inveneo has a strong partnership with Petzl to share safe climbing at height techniques in developing countries with communications workers. The trainings were held in Nairobi because a risk assessment determined Dadaab too insecure at that time.

During the week of March 19, Inveneo, NetHope, Setright and Cisco’s local gold partner Dimension Data teams traveled to Dadaab. Monday and Tuesday, our team worked side-by-side with the newly trained NGO, Orange and Setright teams in Dadaab, giving them the guidance and confidence to successfully complete the Orange and UNHCR tower installations.

The Orange tower is the hub for the access network and the UNHCR tower is the hub for DadaabNET. Dimension Data was also busy meeting with IT staff at the installation sites: consulting with Cisco-led TacOps engineers, training local staff and completing the initial router configurations.

As part of the training and skills building plan, we left Dadaab late Tuesday afternoon to cover training the Orange Network Operations Center in Nairobi. While away, the six newly trained agency staff were charged with the installation of Customer Premise Equipment for both the access and DadaabNET networks. The team includes staff from UNHCR, World Food Program, Norwegian Refugee Counsel, Care, Oxfam and Kenya Red Cross so it was truly an interagency support group. The expectation was that four or five sites could be installed, and then reviewed and verified after our return. On Thursday in Dadaab, we found our expectations were far exceeded.

The DadaabNET team installed 19 radios at ten agency locations. For two days, we verified the work and fine-tuned the implementations. Future installs and troubleshooting can now be completed by the local IT team with our team positioned to provide remote support for existing and ongoing humanitarian agency installations. The DadaabNET team has taken full ownership of the networks.

All future troubleshooting, support and installations will be managed frontline by the local DadaabNET interagency team. By the same count, Dimension Data, working with Cisco TacOps successfully implemented and tested routing at all ten newly installed locations and ensured a good hand-off to the DadaabNET team.

The initial bandwidth contracted was fully installed. Orange is on track to add triple the amount available to keep pace with demand and to meet new service order expectations.

This connectivity is already enabling the humanitarian agencies to function better, to communicate between agencies, and to support overall operations. They also have plans to move more costly VSAT systems to failover mode. As the new network architecture is tried and proven to be more reliable and cost effective, it will be extended to the general population via sustainable outreach community centers that support learning, resettlement and economic empowerment.

As a result of this project, Inveneo, Cisco, NetHope and Orange will also continue to grow their partnerships and collaborations so that there will be ever increasing opportunities to extend broadband across rural Kenya and beyond.

The Dadaab Connect project is funded by Inveneo’s Broadband for Good Program, Cisco, Microsoft, NetHope, Craig Newmark, the Orr Family Foundation, UNHCR, and USAID’s Global Broadband Innovations Program.

Inveneo and Rock Global Help Sister Irene Bring Hope to Refugees in Rural Rwanda

1. Posted by Inveneo on January 7, 2009 in the categories: News, Relief

(by Ted Miller)

In the Kiziba refugee camp, in the Western Province of Rwanda, Sister Irene Guia is making a difference in the lives of thousands. As Country Director for the Jesuit Refugee Service in Rwanda, Sister Irene is responsible for the formal education of primary and secondary students (8,400 and 1,400 respectively) at Kiziba and the refugee camp of Gihembe, each of which houses more than 18,000 displaced residents of war-torn Congo. She also oversees projects for youth who have abandoned the school system.

Sister Irene is a driven and passionate humanitarian with a clear vision of how to make life better for all in the camp. When it came time to put the next part of her plan into action – to build a computer-learning center in each camp that could be used to help teach young people basic computer skills – Sister Irene approached it with the same attitude.

She insisted that best way to improve the lives for people in the camp was to teach them basic job skills and then have them teach others. With basic education and computer training, she hoped to help many of these refugees make it out of the camp and make lives for themselves. She also hoped to give them a taste of the outside world and a chance to communicate with their peers outside the camp.

For the first phase of the project, Sister Irene wanted to open one computer center at Kiziba in time for the beginning of the new school year in August. However, having never attempted to pull off a project quite like this before, she did not know where to start or who to turn to. She put out a call to her colleagues in the region and learned about a project that Inveneo had been involved with the prior year.

“When I first decided that I wanted to go through with this project, it was pretty intimidating,” says Sister Irene. “I think this is a challenge many people like me in the region face every day. We want to do good, we want to push things forward and provide opportunities to the people in our camps, but lack the contacts and resources to do so. It was a true blessing to learn about Inveneo, and the good they are doing throughout Africa.”

After exchanging e-mails with Inveneo Project Manager Jessica Santana, it was decided that the Kiziba project would include the installation of 14 new, low power computers networked together with a central printer along with a reliable generator as the power source. Refurbished computers were not an option because they were unreliable, and they needed something sustainable to work with inconsistent power in the camp.

Inveneo introduced Sister Irene to Johnny Kayihura from Rock Global Consulting, one of Inveneo’s certified ICT partners in Rwanda, who led for the installation project.

“Sister Irene knew what she wanted from the start,” reports Johnny Kayihura. “When she puts her mind to something, there is a straight forward set of goals, and she won’t take no for an answer. Its driven people like her that are helping change people’s lives in our country in a big way.”

With close oversight from Sister Irene, Rock Global and Inveneo quickly jumped into action. They had just two months until the opening of classes, and had a lot of work to do. First Inveneo had to deliver the hardware, then Rock Global had to perform the install and make sure everything was up and running for the students.

“Working with Sister Irene on this project was a rewarding challenge,” states Jessica Santana, Inveneo Project Manager. “She has such a passion for her students. Inveneo and the team at Rock Global worked hard to ensure that she received the equipment and support she needed to implement a successful, sustainable program.”

By August, the project at Kiziba was completed and the camp had its first computer-learning center. Almost immediately, students and teachers began taking advantage of the new technology, and Sister Irene reported nothing but smiles from each and every one of them. This past December, Sister Irene began training 85 teachers on basic computer literacy. During the holidays, small groups of teachers attended five hours per week of training each.

Currently, Sister Irene, Johnny, and Inveneo are already hard at work to complete a second computer center at Gihembe, set to be finished in early 2009.

“I believe that completing projects, big or small, will always depend on the strength of our engagement with others,” explains Sister Irene. “That’s why I believe that this project, in spite of being very simple, will somehow affect the lives of all of us. From the first moment, what has driven all of us is the commitment to helping others, especially refugees. I want to thank Inveneo and Rock Global for their commitment to our desire to make this happen.”