ICTworks by Inveneo

With rural ICT implementations in over 23 countries, Inveneo gets some interesting support calls as all manner of issues come about. Today from Kenya, we bring you the lizard that blew up the inverter.

Apparently a little green lizard thought an electrical inverter at one of our project sites would be a nice warm place to take a nap. ZAP! He became a fried lizard and took out the AC power system when he shorted out the inverter motherboard. Here's a close-up.

Now this was an easy fix for our local partner, Winafrique. But not all of our support calls are so simple to diagnose and rectify. Here is one we received from Nepal:

A monkey is relocating the WiFi antenna on the roof. Please suggest the best troubleshooting steps for that.

Not having a wild monkey troop in San Francisco to test solutions with, the best we could do is come up with these three options for our Nepali partners to try:

1. Coat antenna with cayenne pepper to annoy the monkey
2. Electrify a fake antenna to teach the monkey to stay away
3. And if those didn't work, make monkey stew

Usually though, our local partners have a solution, like the time killer bees nested in another WiFi box. No one wants to disturb a killer bees’ nest, but honey conducts electricity and the bees were shorting out the router, taking out Internet access to the project site.

Our local partner in the project, Norbert Okec, knew the local beekeeper, borrowed a beekeeper outfit, and cleaned, repaired and reinstalled the WiFi box. To quote Mark Summer,

It shows just how important it is to have local partners to help with installations, support and many of the other issues you can never predict in Africa and Haiti.

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Last week, there was a countrywide blackout in Kenya. The electrical authority, KPLC, took the national electrical grid offline from around 6pm to around 11pm, local time due to a generator failure.

As you can imagine, this was a shock to the country and its national pride. Kenya thought itself immune to blackouts due to its hydropower system, which is now under duress after a multi-year drought. But amidst the chaos, there is an ICT lesson to learn. Just listen to what Moses Kemibaro did when the lights went out:

The first thing I did was whip out my smart phone and decided to get on Twitter and Facebook via Safaricom’s 3G connection that was working in spite of the blackout. In a matter of seconds, I had replies that it was not just in Westlands and Kileleshwa that had a blackout but that it was indeed countrywide!

This is kind of “peculiar” since even though I did not have access to television or radio the whole time, here I was able to get the latest news via the Internet on Twitter and Facebook on the extensive Kenya Power and Lighting Company (KPLC) blackout.

Alternate Kenyan power generation

So here we have a case study in how information and communication technology can delivery timely and needed news during a national crisis. Safaricom's voice and data systems were able to spread knowledge of the event via the Internet when traditional media were unable to, thanks to their backup distributed power systems.

And the surprise there? Many mobile phone operators generate their own power from wind and solar, as much as diesel generator. Inveneo ICIP WinAfrique and other power partners are equipping cell towers with alternate power solutions that work even with the national grid (or the sun) is down.

The national blackout might have another surprise as well - a Kenyan baby boom nine months from now. But only with non-geeks. Those wired, like Moses, didn't take advantage of a great opportunity to say:

"Hey baby, how you doing?"

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