How a new internet project is helping make the people of Sierra Leone happier

Davar Fazaeli details the challenges that have been faced to bring ultrafast broadband to the West African state - and the impact it will have

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The sea has always been a driver of change in Sierra Leone, the small but pivotal West African nation where I have been investing for three decades.

The name itself comes from seafarers, pioneering Portuguese mariners who 500 years ago saw the outline of a hunting predator in the mountainous peninsula that looms over the Atlantic Ocean: Sierra Leone, Lion Mountain.

So, there’s strong historical symmetry in the role the sea is playing in the modern transformation of the country, the arrival of high-speed, fibre-borne connectivity offering data transmission speeds comparable with almost anywhere in the world, at a price that is starting to be an affordable luxury in a developing region such as West Africa.

It comes from the sea.To be more precise, it comes down a single seabed cable, not much thicker than my wrist, of ultra-fast optical fibres capable of transmitting data at rates of up to Terabyte (1,000 Gigs) per second. It is part of ACE (Africa Coast To Europe), a submarine high-speed cable that runs for 17,000 km from France to South Africa down the west coast of the continent.

Built at a cost of USD 700 million, ACE is one of several global internet linkages with the power to change Africa. Safely sunk to a depth of around 6,000 m, the offshore routing was chosen especially for its stability and low fault risk. It has spurs, side cables that branch off to numerous African littoral countries from Mauritania to Gabon, and also reach landlocked nations like Niger and Mali with their own dedicated overland connections. Started eight years ago, ACE will have 24 nations in its network when completed.

Furthermore, the cable uses the latest multiplexing technology meaning it can package multiple data packages into a single signal, dramatically ramping up transmission rates. With upgrades to transmission nodes, speeds of 20 TB per second are realisable.

So, what does all this have to do with Sierra Leone, a country that, sadly, many outsiders still associate with a legacy of war and poverty?

The government of Sierra Leone was one of the initial customers of ACE, negotiating a deal that brough a spur to the country almost ten years ago. What it did then showed a farsightedness and vision symptomatic of a government eager to release its country from its past.

The government decided to transfer the running of the sea cable terminal into the private sector. In effect it said, we have brought the hosepipe here but to get the actual water to the right people, we need private help.

That is where my companies, ZoodLabs and eventually MetroCable, came in, winning the privatisation contract to run the sea cable landing site and to ensure the realisation of the extraordinary potential it offers. This involved multi-million-dollar investment: construction of a vast, carefully-designed network of cabling, nodes, transmission boxes and other infrastructure. And it took time: more than two years to source the materials and build the network.Numerous obstacles had to be dealt with.

Power is not completely reliable in Freetown and although improving at neck speed pace we still had to work out how to deal with that in the interim, to lose internet connectivity because of power cuts would undermine customer confidence, quite literally, at the flick of a switch.

We put together a consortium willing to build a 1.2 MW solar power plant within the confines of the landing site, with battery back-up and capacitors capable of ensuring uninterrupted service. It makes our network the only fully green one in west Africa, saving hundreds of tonnes of CO2 emissions each year.In spite of these challenges the result is now ready, a 750 km network of fibre-optic cabling that covers the entire capital city of Sierra Leone, Freetown, with its population of just over two million, about one fourth of the country’s population. There is now no business, house or dwelling more than 200 m of a box offering highspeed, stable, affordable internet.

The `last few metres’, always the most intricate of any internet network, is the realm of the many internet service providers who already operate in Freetown and we are working with them now offering deals that make the last link affordable and realisable.

They have worked since the age of the internet first arrived in Sierra Leone using data transmitted using microwave and point-to-multipoint radios. Notorious for being power hungry, they suffer from interference during bad weather conditions. The quantum leap forward offered by fibre – better speed, more reliability, more bandwidth – makes this next step irresistibly attractive. As my Sierra Leonean friends put it in the local Krio language that was brought here by seafarers several centuries ago `fibre don kam’ or `fibre has come’.I still get challenged by colleagues and peers from my days working in the US.

Their thinking is always the same: how can you invest in a country with a poverty record like Sierra Leone and a history scarred by war.

My answer is always the same: I am not interested in history, I am interested in actuality. We now have a third democratically elected civilian government, one that is interested in progress. And they want this done right but fast. Their signature Education program, the envy of the rest of the world, is their focus, something that is right in line with our vision of a better future for Sierra Leone.

When I first invested in food production. Food was and will always be a staple. What I have come to realise is that in our modern 21st century world, data, connectivity, internet, they are just as much a staple as food. And this is true just as much in Fort Lauderdale, Florida where I once lived as Freetown, Sierra Leone.

Davar Fazaeli is the Founder and CEO of ZoodLabs.com and Metro Companies in Sierra Leone