At Africa Tech Festival this month, the subject of AI was on the minds of all attendees and exhibitors. The technology has proved too pervasive to ignore in 2024, and while it will be a key focus for many, another area of concern particularly within the African context is rural connectivity.

It is with this in mind that we visited the Nokia booth at Africa tech Festival, to take a closer look at its rural connectivity solution, as well as speak to Naveed Kashif (pictured below), Mobile Networks Market Unit head for Southern Africa at the telecommunications service provider.

Here he unpacked why rural connectivity is top of mind at the moment, and why it will prove vital in terms of bridging the digital divide which has only widened since the pandemic ended.

When it comes to rural connectivity, Kashif explains that Nokia has three very specific objectives in mind.

“The first is to provide a complete site solution. The second objective is to provide this at a very low cost. The third is that this (the complete solution) is deployable in a very easy way,” he points out. He goes on to note that the method of deployment is one aspect of the third objective, adding that the solution can be shared via a multi-tenancy, which is made possible on the Nokia side of things.

“What Nokia is doing, is building the solution and then we engage with several operators in Africa to launch rural sites so that we can bridge the digital divide,” he emphasises.

Looking at local uptake of such solutions, Kashif highlights some of the major networks like Vodacom and MTN as showing interest in deploying such an offering. The “smaller” networks are also keen, with Kashif mentioning Telkom, Cell C, and rain.

“When it comes to rural connectivity, we’re open to work with everybody, but also it depends on where we have business. You cannot just go and deploy rural sites. For example we are the supplier for radio network with Vodacom, so essentially, we work with Vodacom,” he illustrates.

“Our sites are deployable for anybody. Even they can be deployed by tower companies, and they can offer them as a leasing service to offer rural connectivity to all the operators. Our other objective is to make the site available as multi-tenant,” he says.

Looking at the challenges presented by rolling out such solutions in a country like South Africa, Kashif notes that South Africa has issues that are quite unique.

“One of the big challenges is theft and vandalism for the sites. This is a very important thing to take care of, so the way we are building solutions is without a container at the bottom, as typically this is a section that can be easily vandalised. So we are trying to raise everything above. We have three different tower sizes – 10 metre, 15 metre, and higher – and we try to make a full outdoor solution in a way that it is not accessible,” he unpacks.

The other key challenge is well documented at this stage – stable power supply. South Africa’s woes in this regard is worldwide news, and despite loadshedding being less of an issue in urban environments in 2024, in rural ones, power and stability still cannot be guaranteed.

“What we are doing is making use of solar to run our solution in a hybrid-power mode. It has a solar panel, but also a pack for a small generator that is wind powered. This allows us to use both in addressing the power issues in SA,” says Kashif.

He is also excited for local customers to start leveraging these solutions as they are essentially new. While the different technologies have existed from Nokia for a few years now, they have not been packaged in this way before, and that brings with it a number of possibilities, according to the regional head.

“We are trying to make it cheaper, because for rural connectivity, the use case has to be supportive,” he adds.

Looking to the coming months, Kashif is predicting a significant uptake of rural connectivity solutions, especially in countries where coverage is still an issue, with the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) being mentioned as an example.

“We are seeing very high interest. Not just in South Africa, but the entire African continent, because I would say that exhibition (Africa Tech Festival) is not just local, but regional and international, so we are seeing high interest. Operators have targets when it comes to coverage, and specifically in countries where coverage is low there is a very high interest deploy. In South Africa it is more about ultra rural, because coverage is about 92/93 percent. So yes, we are seeing very high interest.”

[Images – Provided]