How A Rural, Solar-Powered, Community-Owned ISP In South Africa Is Changing Communication

There's a joke or a meme, an update of Maslow's hierarchy of needs that puts Wi-Fi solidly at the bottom of the triangle. It's not entirely wrong, even in places that are so remote there aren't telephones, never mind internet access.

While many parts of rural South Africa are still struggling with providing clean water, electricity, and basic education of a decent quality, access to reliable and affordable telecommunication facilities will no doubt play a key part in what less-privileged communities will need to grow and sustain themselves in the future.

In the rural community of Mankosi, in South Africa's Eastern Cape province, this has taken an extremely innovative form: a mesh of solar-powered network stations, dotted around the village, which work together to provide voice and data services to local residents. The network is a not-for-profit initiative, developed together with researchers from the University of the Western Cape, and is community owned. The novel structure and infrastructure means it can also sidestep another of South Africa's telecoms challenges, which is the extremely high cost of mobile voice and data provided by conventional commercial networks. The Zenzeleni network sells voice calls for as little as 20c a minute (compared to the usual R1.50), with data costs between 20 and 40 times cheaper. As an added bonus, the solar stations can also be used to recharge people's mobile phones.