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Using Wireless to Save Lives

Telecoms Sans Frontieres shows that telecommunications are a valuable tool in humanitarian efforts.

In early 2005, Hamadou, frail and ill following days of starvation, walked for almost a day with his equally frail mother from his remote village in Niger - a landlocked country in western Africa - to the nearest town, Dakoro, to find food. Niger, the world's poorest country, faced its worst food crisis that year following an unusually dry season and locust invasion. The crisis affected 3 million Nigeriens and resulted in an unprecedented exodus from remote villages to faraway towns and cities in search of food. Hamadou and his mother were one of the few lucky ones to find both work and food in Dakoro. They returned home when international relief workers brought food to their village.

If Niger, a country known for perennial dry seasons and droughts, is hit by a food crisis again, Hamadou and others in his village won't have to desert their homes again. Thanks to Telecoms Sans Frontieres (TSF) - or Telecom Without Borders - a France-based nongovernmental organization (NGO) that provides emergency telecommunications services in disaster-hit areas around the world - Hamadou's village now has a permanent wireless telecom link with Dakoro, one of Niger's nerve centers. The link will allow villagers to get supplies long before a similar crisis strikes again.

Hamadou's village isn't the only one. TSF installed a dozen permanent telecom links in the Dakoro region that cater to more than 720,000 Nigeriens. And according to TSF officials, 27 more permanent wireless telecom sites will be installed "soon."

"That's the big change in Dakoro as well as in TSF," said Oisin Walton, information and communications coordinator for TSF. "The region now has a permanent telecom connection that links it to the capital. And with the installation of telecom centers in Niger, TSF has transformed itself from being just a provider of emergency communication to also being a provider of information and communications technology (ICT) for prevention of emergencies and disasters."

Indeed TSF is a unique example of how an NGO is using ICT to respond to humanitarian crisis, proving telecommunication's role is just as significant as bringing food, water, shelter, protection and medical help in any disaster.

Founded in 1998 by Jean-Francois Cazenave and Monique Lanne-Petit, TSF's genesis was the simple observation, made after many years of experience, that in addition to medical and food aid, reliable emergency telecommunications services are critical.

In 2006, TSF became a partner of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) and UNICEF, which made it the "First Responder" of the UN's Emergency Telecommunications Cluster.

TSF is also a working group member of the United Nations emergency telecoms body, WGET; a partner of the Humanitarian Aid Department of the European Commission (ECHO) and a member of the International Council of Voluntary Agencies.

Over the last nine years, TSF has chalked up nearly 60 missions to disaster zones - usually reaching a destination within 24 hours. These efforts helped hundreds of NGOs and thousands of families overcome many types of crises - everything from tsunamis, floods and earthquakes to man-made disasters, like the Iraq war.

"While providing telecom services in such crises, we realized that again the role of ICT cannot be just kept limited to providing of emergency communication services," Walton said. "We realized that telecommunication, in fact, could also play a key role in the prevention of emergencies like a food crisis or an epidemic."

The Niger installation is a concrete example of how technology can be used to prevent calamities as well.

 

A Century Behind
One key contributing factor to the 2005 food crisis in Niger was that there was neither telecommunications infrastructure, nor a postal system. As a result, the government's food crisis prevention system proved completely ineffective for mitigating the crisis's effects. For instance, Walton said,

the government's Early Warning System - responsible for collecting, assimilating and distributing information to Niger's capital, Niamey - used archaic methods like messengers traveling by camels, cycle or even foot. Critical information often took weeks - sometimes as long as two months - to arrive in Niamey. So by the time relief reached affected areas, it was more often than not simply too late. Thousands died in remote areas of Niger, according to TSF, because the government couldn't bring relief in time.

"This was an appalling situation," Walton said. "It forced us to talk to the Niger government, ECHO and two of our partners, Inmarsat and France Telecom Mobile Satellite Communications, to see if they were prepared to fund a project to connect the most vulnerable areas of Niger to the capital."

Luckily approvals came easily, and now 12 of the remotest areas near Dakoro are connected to Niamey. Instead of messengers carrying chits, critical information is now sent digitally and instantly to authorities.

"All these sites where we deployed the network are in what we call 'uncommunicative areas,' which means there is no GSM network, no landline, no Internet and hardly any radio communications," Walton said. "We connect these areas via satellite communications using terminals donated by Inmarsat."

TSF said that system is running smoothly and since the beginning of July 2006, more than 200 urgent messages and 100 forms have been transmitted between the 12 regions covered and Niamey authorities. Decision-makers in the capital can now obtain real-time data on cereal and livestock markets, variations in stock of subsistence crops, modifications in the population's diet, the development of sanitary and nutritional situations, variations in natural resources, and commercial trade dynamics. The forms sent to decision-makers in Niamey also include information on the local health situation.

"A notable feature of this project is that it does not cost tons of money," Walton said. The network was set up at a cost of about $100,000, and "the system runs for only about a $100 per month."

Another notable feature of this project is that unlike TSF's usual missions where it stays up to a month until normal telecommunications are restored, the tenure here is much longer. "We have a mandate to operate this system for two years, during which we will teach the locals how to operate and maintain the network," Walton said. "That way, after TSF leaves, they can take over."

To make the network even cheaper to operate, TSF signed an agreement this month with satellite operator Eutelsat Communications. This will provide access to Eutelsat's proprietary VSAT technology.

"The Inmarsat technology [broadband global area network, or BGAN] we currently use is good for quick installations. It takes a few minutes to set up because it uses much smaller equipment, but it is more expensive to operate [$4 per megabyte]," Walton said. "The VSAT technology, on the other hand, takes longer to set up - a few hours - but it is more suitable for long-term services because costs in the longer run are much lower [$1,000 per month of unlimited data]."

TSF considers the partnership an important step since it will enable teams to stay longer in emergencies, and opens up new possibilities for the NGO to support affected populations in ongoing emergencies - notably in long-term, established refugee camps - by deploying long-term communications centers.

So are more such projects in the offing? "Certainly," Walton said. TSF has already drawn up plans to open the next long-term crisis-prevention center in Nicaragua, the most sparsely populated Central American nation, which is infamous for its devastating earthquakes. The Nicaraguan crisis prevention center will be established by the end of this year. In early 2008, TSF will open its first crisis-prevention center in Asia, probably in Sri Lanka or India, depending on where the next disaster hits.

 

Indrajit Basu is international correspondent for Government Technology's Digital Communities.