Innovative villagers wow world

Co-op earns R137 000 funding

ACOMMUNITY telecommunications network in a rural Mthatha village finished fourth in the global Mozilla Equal Rating Innovation Challenge, bagging themselves funding of about ($10 000) R137 000 .

Zenzeleni Networks is a community-owned co-operative in Mankosi village that provides voice and data communications at a fraction of the usual cost.

Zenzeleni’s team leader, Dr Carlos Rey-Moreno, said that through the co-op Mankosi had built and maintained its own telephone and internet “company”.

“Local calls are free and calls to other networks cost half of what they would on those other networks. Data costs a 10th of the market price,” said Rey-Moreno, adding that the high cost of communication in South Africa had motivated them to start the company.

He explained that Zenzeleni used mesh networking – a cheap, lowenergy system using scattered, cheap node devices rather than large, central and expensive masts or beacons to which cellphones or other devices must connect.

Messages are channelled from one part of the mesh to any other and through as many nodes as necessary.

The Mozilla challenge is a global innovation competition aiming to catalyse new thinking and innovation to provide access to the open internet to those still living without.

Mozilla is the company best known for its development of the Firefox internet browser.

Rey-Moreno said an important feature of the Mankosi network was that it was solar-powered.

There is no state-owned electric grid in the area.

“The solar systems also allow Zenzeleni users to charge phones at the houses that host the nodes, as well as providing lighting to those homes,” he said.

Rey-Moreno said they were honoured to have been shortlisted out of more than 100 projects across the world and to have been placed fourth.

“But the support of ordinary voters from across the world means even more to us because the whole point is to keep spreading the idea that anyone, any community, can ‘do it by themselves’, which is the meaning of the word zenzeleni,” Rey-Moreno said.

He said the prize-money would be used to continue developing the backbone of the project to make it possible for schools and communities in the Mthatha river valley to provide themselves with affordable communications.

“We remain committed to our collective vision of community-owned telecommunications networks that allow ordinary people to connect with one another and take control of their own destiny,” he said.

The other South African company that made it into the finals of the challenge was Afri-Fi: Free Public WiFi – an extension of Project Isizwe. It was named runners-up and walked away with R1-million. —