A year after: Revisiting 2014 Ebola outbreak in West Africa

By Sam Agona

It is one year since Ebola broke out in West Africa and this piece in the New Vision gives a view on state of the Health Systems in West Africa prior to the outbreak and how the response behaved. 

An Ebola Care Centre constructed in Liberia as a response strategy

A woman showing signs of Ebola stretched off to an Ebola Care Center in Liberia

As a communication strategy, a salon car being used to inform people about Ebola (Photo by CDC Global)

An Ebola Travel Questionnaire used at entry point by countries to prevent the spread of Ebola into other countries.

In Sierra Leone, hand washing was emphasized by scaling access to washing equipment

                                   Posters used in West Sierra Leone to inform people about Ebola

 A member of the Ebola response team being disinfected as they remove their protective equipment

Boots used by Ebola team response group, part of their Protective Equipment washed and spread to dry. 

A rapid diagnostic tool for Ebola that was initially tested in Guinea; at the peak of infection, diagnosis was taking up to days, this did not only make treatment a challenge but once an Ebola suspect showed signs of infection, delay in testing meant they stayed infectious for longer periods and yet not proved.

Uganda’s journey in leveraging internet access through NBI; but forgot the local Citizen

By Sam Agona 

                                                                                 

In 2008 Uganda launched the National Backbone Project under Ministry of ICT. This project involved laying optic fiber cables interconnecting major towns around the country and was expected to lead to enormous benefits including but not limited to low cost access to connectivity and near ubiquitous connectivity within Uganda. However till date, this seems not to have materialized as expected.

Precisely the objectives of the project included establishing a national backbone; connecting all ministries in a single Wide area network; establishing a government data center and connecting 28 major districts in Uganda to the backbone. Its expected outputs included having all government Ministries connected; e-government services implemented, 28 districts/towns connected to national backbone.

And in turn, the outputs were expected to lead to improved communication between government ministries; improved services delivery by government ministries; reduced cost of communications; increased economic development and subsequently a reduction in poverty.

                                                

                                               Cables being rolled out on the streets (Internet Photo)

And after the first phase, the achievements included having ministries connected to e-government network; there is video conferencing services rolled out in all Ministries; Kampala, Entebbe, Bombo, Mukono and Jinja connected to national backbone and 183 Km of optical fibre cable laid; this is a very forward strategy however in the whole plan, citizenry, the local tax payer was not catered for.

This project drew a lot of political clout, as can be shown in part of the budget speech on 12^th June, 2014 where the Minister of Finance of Uganda, Maria Kiwanuka read this statement in reference to the ICT sector;

“This sector is achieving increasing importance as a support to the other sectors. It is no longer a sector on its own but it is an input to health, education, business and trade, agriculture and weather forecasting. During the year just ending, we have completed construction of two phases of the National Transmission Backbone Infrastructure which has improved internet connectivity at an affordable cost. This has reduced the cost of bandwidth to $ 300 per megabit per second per month, down from $600 prevailing on the market. Bulk internet bandwidth agreements have been signed with Government institutions with 18 ministries so far being supplied with cheaper bandwidth. I encourage the private sector to utilise the infrastructure in order to reduce their ICT costs of doing business and enhance their efficiency and profitability”.

But again, let us reverse to circumstances surrounding the roll out of NBI. In the 2012 National ICT Policy for Uganda, a lot was promised with section 3.2.1 a) vividly stating “Extension of the national backbone infrastructure to cover the entire country as well as addressing last mile challenges”. The policy went on to state much more but the interest of this blog is to discuss how local internet access has been affected by inability to scale up networks links to last mile beyond Ugandan government structures.

In 2008, NBI was managed by Ministry of ICT however by 2010, NITA-U got operational but had a lot to clear out with the then Minister of ICT Dr. Ham Muliira. Initial designs rotated around having a greater capacity of the NBI links dedicated to inter-connecting government ministries, establishing video conferencing, VoIP services, mailing facilities among others. Government to government communications is very important however, there needs to be an expeditious way of improvising capacity for local citizens whose businesses and ventures would heavily benefit from the backbone capacity, therefore the whole point of having an e-government has not allowed the effect of the NBI trickle down to the local man. Worse still, in the country side, the effect of the NBI has not been seen. Major regional offices in up country districts either do not have connectivity at all or the office holders are using 3G data modems which is a reflection of an insufficiency in the implementation of a well written policy.

On paper, the ICT policy put up measures that would help scale internet access to citizens; an implementation of this would help organisations and individuals who need reliable internet connectivity to run their ventures such as countryside hubs,   media reporters, and other users of through mass usage of online facilities. The last mile connectivity has not worked at local government level as was supposed to be.

                                             

                                                  Cables used in NBI (Photo by: Daily Monitor)

With the NBI capacity reaching the local users, the cost of 1mbps internet link would be no more than $50.00, but the inability of the cable effect to provide service to the last man  has left a service void which is  exploited by private telecom companies charging an average of $600.00 for the same link capacity. This still explains why in areas like northern Uganda, Zoom, private service provision firms have stepped in to provide service. In Kampala, recently launched Smart Telecom has intensively capitalised on data services. If the NBI had met its objectives, probably much of the connectivity services would have been provided by the government backbone than private firms which tend to provide service at a high cost.  This high  internet costs, this affects the level of content search by researchers and people interested in learning such as students, people and institutions creating content and need to share and at the same time, it has made it challenging and expensive for content creators, bloggers, publishers and other professionals in that line to expose their work using internet services.

Uganda Communications Commission responsible for licensing telecommunications service providers in Uganda is making it difficult to license other firms (service providers) trying to enter into the data provision market. This is because, the more the service providers, the lower the costs of service could most likely become. Data services in Uganda is the cash cow of the industry and seemingly the regulator (UCC) would not want it tampered with by new entrants who most likely can tilt market balance  against already established market players. Based on this backdrop, new entrants will be frustrated and service will stay limited for a longer period.

Conclusively, the limited and high cost of internet service in Uganda is majorly because the implementing bodies of the National Backbone Infrastructure (NBI) did not put much consideration into the populace. This is probably because the RCDF spearheaded by UCC is working on last mile connectivity. If we are to base on RCDF to roll out connectivity throughout Uganda, this may take a while to be felt. . Several district local government offices still do not have any connectivity; there is not much effort towards achieving final connectivity at the districts. Cost of internet is still very high, something that has frustrated much hope that Ugandans had in the optic fiber cable (NBI). However, if priorities are realigned and the objectives followed, the next few years could see Uganda having gigabytes of bandwidth and increased access and usage of internet. 

This article appeared on the Global Voices website. 

Why your favorite FM Radio Station suffers so much noise from “neighboring” Stations

By Sam Agona

With the opening up of the airwaves, almost all major towns in Uganda have a local radio station of their own. Some towns however have more than the others with Kampala peaking in number of radios 57 out of about 260 radio stations (Source: UCC, 2011).

                Uganda Communications Commission, the body responsible for licensing radios in Uganda 

Uganda Communications Commission takes action against radio stations that interfere with airwaves of their “neighbors”, but the problem has still remained mainly among stations in Kampala. This is caused by one or a combination of the following;

A typical interior of an interview room in a Radio Station

Co-channel interference; because there is no such thing as an exclusive channel in the world of radio, there always will be situations where you have somebody else on your channel. Hopefully, this co-channel user is hundreds of miles away from your coverage area, but that is not always the case. The best thing you can do is avoid applying for a channel that is being used by another licensee in close proximity to you. In most situations, however, that cannot be accomplished.

If the co-channel station is more than 12 dB below your RF-signal level, interference will be minimal. If it is less than 12 dB below your RF-signal level, mitigation techniques can be used including moving to the opposite side of the tower, lowering the antenna height, changing CTCSS or DCS codes, lowering power levels, reducing receiver sensitivity, adding attenuators, or a combination of these items.

Adjacent-channel interference; such interference generally is a factor of how strong the signal being received by the adjacent channel is compared with the strength of the desired signal. Most receivers allow up to a 60 dB difference in strength between the desired signal and the adjacent-channel signal before there is degradation to the former. Same mitigation techniques as co-channel interference are relevant.

                                         

                                       Peter Otai of Magic FM during his Radio Show

Transmitter noise; all transmitters put out noise on the frequencies close to the operating frequency of the transmitter. If you have a receiver that is within 200 kHz of a transmitter frequency, and in close physical proximity, you probably do have transmitter noise affecting your receiver signal’s minimum threshold. Distance and special filters usually are used to correct this kind of problem. You may need to move the receiver away from the transmitter site.

Harmonics; All transmitters and some other devices put out harmonics when power is applied. The number of harmonics produced can range from 2 to 10; the greater the number, the greater the signal distortion. An example of a harmonic-caused problem would be a transmitter operating at 152.1 MHz. If a receiver at the same site was operating at 456.3 MHz, it would hear the VHF transmitter, no matter what you did to filter the VHF signal out of the UHF signal. Good low-pass or other filters normally fix these kinds of problems.

Radio-frequency interference can be minimized by using the correct protection device for the circumstance.