In an effort to study, validate and enhance business models that achieve economic sustainability of wireless infrastructure in rural and remote areas, the Wireless Africa project, has chosen Nigeria, Uganda and Ghana, as the first three countries to take the lead in the first phase of the project.

Funded by the Canadian International Development Research Centre for a period of two years, with expertise from Europe, companies in the US that have conducted research on low-powered devices appropriate to African countries.

The concept behind the collaborative research and development project is to build bottom-up community-owned networking infrastructure, that will test and develop business models that support community-owned networks with infrastructure supporting these networks owned and/or operated locally.

From a three-day workshop held at Tshwane, in Gauteng, last month, three organisations, the Fantsuam Foundation, in Nigeria, the Onevillage Foundation of Ghana, and the Community Wireless Resource Centre of Uganda, have now been selected as reference sites for the project.

The workshop, attended by 15 African countries, was aimed at promoting networking and collaboration among partners in the Wireless Africa initiative. The Wireless Africa Alliance, a network of supporters of community-owned networks was created out of the workshop, and will share resources and expertise, and collaborates in finding solutions to Africa's communication challenges.

The three countries will implement the new developed technologies, such as the voice-over- Internet Protocol (VoIP)-in-a-box, and wireless Internet services (WHISP)-in-a-box. After the pilot period, these countries will provide feedback, which will be used as a business-model and guidelines for the next seven countries chosen as replicate sites for the project.

Four organisations will work closely with South Africa's Meraka Institute as consortium partners on this project. Information and communication technology (ICT) consultancy company IT+46 will deliver hands-on training and technical advice in the areas of VoIP and traffic management, with Wire.less.dk, which will be involved in the technical development of the wireless Internet technologies. Southern African ICT policy, regulation and management research and training body Link Centre is involved in policy research and KwantuMedia will lead the demand-side studies and the business modelling of the project.

Wireless Africa project head Chris Morris tells Engineering News that communication infrastructure is badly developed on the continent and, with the lack of electricity, innovative ways of using low-power communication technologies, in combination with solar or other renewable energies to provide basic infrastructure and wireless infrastructure to communities' is required.

Morris, who is also an information and communication technology for development specialist at the Meraka Institute of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), says, "We are very fortunate that we have attracted a number of partners that have a similar vision and have built some technical capacity to implement such projects. We are working with them on how to build sustainable wireless networks and create local business opportunities around providing such infrastructure for voice and Internet access."

Wireless Africa envisions the expanded use of ICTs in remote African locations.

"Why should rural, poor and remote areas in Africa be denied access to the information society through a lack of infrastructure or because of exorbitantly high telecommunications costs? Through Wireless Africa, we will have an increased understanding of the reasons for this failure. This, in turn, will inform the development of business models that may contribute to addressing the challenge of sustainable solutions," he concludes.