[APCPress] Announcing new initiative from APC: "Community Wireless"

[Karen Higgs]

APRIL 13 2005

APC’s new “Community Wireless Connectivity” project

JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA -- The APC’s “Community Wireless 
Connectivity” project is looking to connect communities who don’t yet 
have internet access in Africa by skilling them to build their own 
wireless networks. The project covers the development of training 
materials and workshops that will be localised for different 
environmental, regulatory, language and climatic conditions. With four 
regional workshops in Africa in 2005, we’ll be training up to 100 
possible future trainers and producing materials in English, French and 
Arabic. Plans are also afoot in Latin America and Asia-Pacific.

More about the project: 
http://www.apc.org/english/news/index.shtml?x=32071 or
contact Anna Feldman (anna at gn.apc.org) for more information.

Great photos available. We attach article from APC on first workshop below.


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The “Community Wireless Connectivity Training Workshop for East and 
Southern Africa” held in Mtoni, Tanzania (March 21-25 2005)
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APC's Anna Feldman has recently returned from a training workshop on the 
island of Zanzibar in East Africa, as part of the APC's “Community 
Wireless Connectivity” project supported by the IDRC and OSI. She writes:

MTONI, Tanzania -- It seemed a shame to dismantle the wireless set-up 
that took as a week to perfect in Mtoni, Zanzibar, but that was just the 
beginning of the real networking.

As one participant said, “one big network was formed from the first day 
we met, and that was a human network”. Ashraf Mohammed from Zanzibar’s 
Linux Users’ Group came away from the five-day training with a 
commitment to staying in touch with the other trainees, keeping them all 
up-to-date with his progress in connecting local communities to the 
internet.

There were 35 people on the course from Tanzania, Uganda, Kenya, Sudan 
and Nigeria, drawn from a range of community ICT projects, engineering 
and computing faculties of universities and colleges, and NGOs engaged 
in information technology work. And like Ashraf they are all hoping to 
set-up wireless networks in their communities and work places. They will 
support each other through online collaboration, seeking and 
offering advice.

In most cases internet access relies on the availability of a reliable 
fixed telephone line and that can be a struggle to find in many parts of 
rural Africa. Wireless technology, which is based on using radio waves 
to carry data, can by- pass the fixed-line problem.

It is hoped that wireless networking can provide some of the benefits to 
internet access that mobile phone technology gave to telephone access in 
Africa.

The idea of community wireless networking takes this a stage further, 
for the cost and accessibility of wireless technologies also offer 
communities an unusually inclusive role in their electronic networks.

APC’s project partner, Onno Purbo, a community wireless expert from 
Indonesia, describes the opportunity this way.

He sees the traditional telecommunications model as having internet 
access ‘licensed by the government, invested in by the investors, run by 
the operators, for the people’. Whilst wireless technologies provide a 
new community ICT infrastructure model, where everything is 
community-based and access is ‘From the people, by the people, for the 
people.’

And so this workshop was all about sharing knowledge and experiences in 
setting up and maintaining networks.  It was a hands-on training 
designed to support technical skills sharing in community wireless 
networking.

The participants learned how to configure access points, climb towers 
safely, calculate radio links, survey their sites, source appropriate 
equipment, budget for projects, and secure their networks.

They were able to build antennas out of recycled tin cans, and later use 
them to wirelessly connect Grave island – an atol two kilometres across 
the sea from the workshop venue.  

Building the link was the culmination of the workshop, and tested the 
group in all aspects of their training. It was a particularly exciting 
moment when the voices of the mobile unit at sea came through clearly to 
the rest of the group at the base station in Mtoni – carried by radio 
waves using wireless technologies.

The East African workshop was the first in a series of four regional 
workshops for Africa. In twelve months time we will have established a 
base of wireless expertise across the continent - community networkers 
with access to materials in English, French and Arabic, able to share 
their skills with members of their communities, bringing access to ICTs 
and control of that access, all the way home.

And with plans now started for Spanish training in the Latin American 
region, we hope to be reporting soon on similar progress there.

Connecting Grave Island: 
http://www.apc.org/tiki/tiki-index.php?page=GraveIslandLink