Revision as of 19:32, 7 August 2019

Digital Inclusion (DigI)
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DigI Villages

Our installations in the villages in Tanzania were performed in Mar/Apr2019, being:

• Esilalei, Arusha District, our first installation, using a solar powered (120W package) bringing light and connectivity to the community centre
• Migoli, Iringa District - connecting the Nyerere High School, and from there the Community Office and the Dispensary,
• Izazi, Iringa, District - see also our Blog on It takes 90 min to connect a village
• Selela, Arusha District - connecting the market place to the mobile tower being more than 20 km away
• Patandi Teachers College, outside of Arusha - providing Wifi on the campus and establish an affordable Internet connection
• Chiwanda Secondary School is at Chiwanda village in Nkangamo Ward, Tunduma Township Authority - in collaboration with BOACSE
• Mkuranga District, in the North-East of Tanzania - in collaboration with African Child

In addition

• Guinea (in collaboration with Orange and Global fund https://www.theglobalfund.org/fr/)
• Ghana, Suhut-Atwina (Yayra Glover - Kakao World)
• Collaboration with Tech Bridge Invest on pilots in Kenya

===== Esilalei ===

Esilalei

Esilalei is located

Current installation

Esilalei has currently the basis set-up, being an LTE antenna and our LNCC

1. ASK

Future extensions

The dispensary is about ??? away, and will need directive antennas (6 m poles) to be connected - not decided.

===== Mbaash ===

Mbaash

The Mbaash Dispensary is located about 14 km NorthEast of Selela

The challenge has been the construction, to be fixed to the dispensary office. The following entities need to provide their permit to allow for modifications at the house: ????? Due to these restrictions, no decision has been taken on how to further connect.

A solution might be to set up a pole, instead of fixing a construction to the wall.

Lessons learned

From the connection of the first 5 villages, we achieved excellent results:

• In each village we find people having a tremendous People in the villages

Standard poles come in the length of 6 m, which is sufficient for connectivity to reach the mobile network tower being more than 20 km away (case Selela market), or being hidden by the landscape (case Izazi). In addition, the 6 m poles reach up to 2-3 km point-to-multipoint connectivity in rural Tanzania.

In case of larger distances, our solution is to extend to 9 m high poles on the site of the sector antenna (case Migoli), allowing a line-of-site over the top of the trees. In case of the Izazi Dispensary, we used a 6 m pole at the governmental building, and added a 9 m pole at the dispensary.

Phase A:

• 2 villages (Izazi and Mgoli) in Iringa districts are for HIV, TB and Cysticercosis
  • Migoli: has TIGO 3G tower in the village, Latitude: -7.145672 | Longitude: 35.819636, Altitude: 717 meters
  • Izazi: 2G connection from Migoli tower (no 3G), Latitude: -7.23764 | Longitude: 35.720995, Altitude: 753 meters

one Village in Monduli (Selela)

• • Selela, Latitude: -3.210762 | Longitude: 35.947617, Altitude: 1043 meters, TIGO tower on the mountain 5-7 km away
• Esilalei (Lat -3.46945, Long 35.97469) - received 3G Tigo coverage Jun2018

Patandi village

For best praxis, rather extend the reach in the villages than to expand to other villages.

Note: discussions of other villages - GPS coordinates from https://www.gps-coordinates.net)

Villages to be connected

• Kimande (Iringa) - Baseline in Apr2019 - ready to be connected in Okt2019
• Idodi (Iringa)- Baseline in Apr2019 - ready to be connected in Okt2019
• (Mungere (Lat -3.3178, Long 35.892))
• (Mbaash?)
• further villages, if requested (and installed) from collaboration with NGOs

Achievements, Lessons learned and Recommendations

We would like to thank our collaboration partners in Tanzania. Through the combined effort of the government (Ministry of Health, Universal Communication Service Access Funds (UCSAF), National Institute for Medical Research), Academia (Sokoine University of Agriculture, Muhumbili University), Mobile Operators (especially Tigo and Vodacom), and the communities we achieved our goals of bringing “free access to information for everyone”.

Achievements

’’Topics for recommendations by the UN high level panel on Digital Cooperation ‘’

In short,

• we connected villages which were “impossible to connect” Izazi and Selela,
• we brought free information to schools Migoli: Nyerere High School, Market places Selela market and Migoli village centre, governmental buildings Izazi and will connect dispensaries Izazi Dispensary
• we achieved tremendous positive feedback from the society. Does not matter where, we were welcome and got all the support we wanted. ‘’Everyone recognised the value of free access to information’’.
• The mobile operators (Tigo and Vodacom) were very helpful in offering fair deals for the pilots, and involved us in their plans.
• National institutions like UCSAF with Peter Ulanga fully supported us with background information to perform the roll-out.
• our input to the UN High Level Panel on Digital Cooperation is well reflected by the topics brought out by the panel, being inclusiveness, trust and capacity building.
  • Inclusiveness: Everyone has free access to information
  • Trust: we collaborate with health authorities to enable highly trusted content on the local village platform. In addition, the InfoInternet standard filtering text and pictures will remove vulnerable content from Web sites before being presented in the information spot.
  • Capacity building is key of “Internet Lite for All”, with a village server with free access to information and apps to download

And,

• early results from the medical intervention using video and animations to inform the local communities show outstanding results in health knowledge uptake.

Recommendations and Future Work

Though, there are lot’s of areas still in need to be elaborated

• Adopting the Nordic model of 1 contract with up to 6 SIM cards and a combined data package to create a better base for the information spots,
• A framework for establishing and operating information spots in the villages. In a country being as big as Tanzania, the business model of operators does not allow a coverage of mobile broadband everywhere. Thus, combining mobile network with information spots is an excellent opportunity for digital inclusion, but is currently not addressed in the framework for mobile licenses.
• the distribution of vouchers and the costs for video. Currently, data packages cost 30.000-35.000 TZS for 10 GB data per month. Given that a video of 1 hour typically consumes 1 GB, that means that 1 video costs 3.500 TZS, which is beyond reach for the majority of people. Though, a solution might address sponsorship or social sharing of video content to the local village spot.
• Empower the communities to extend the access to information
• the development of the village platform enabling local communities to contribute to knowledge creation.
• The framework for governmental involvement,
  • transferring the existing information into digital information and
  • focus on new business models for free access to information, involving communities and mobile operators.