Over the past 11 Years we have been asked to work on various projects in West Africa, West Africa is interesting for us because it is one of the poorest parts of the world and had the least connectivity for data than anywhere else in the world.
why is that interesting? the challenge.
Up until we helped Sierra Leone gain access to the ACE undersea cable the only way to get data in and out of the country was via satellite and this is not only cumbersome and slow it is also very unreliable when you factor in the heavy monsoon like rain and the scorching temperatures (not to mention Solar Flares and Harmattan)
the reason there was no international connectivity was because Sierra Leone had become bullied into their neighbors (Liberia) Civil War and the boat laying the Main One undersea cable simply missed out Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia as they where marked as unsafe.
Gary on his way to work
then you have 4 main sites that need connectivity, 220 miles apart 20000+ users (and no connectivity)
we where asked to assist with and overlook the IT dept of African Minerals Ltd, primarily their Tonkolili Iron Ore Project, the second largest Iron Ore Mine in the world.
before we go any further please remember all the largest players in the mining industry said this couldn’t be done, was impossible etc but we know impossible just mean things take a little longer to work out.
The AML IT team and more importantly their network was not working properly, the company had spent millions trying to do it right, 4 different teams where called in to assist and it wasnt until we came on board that it got fixed.
so my first port of call was to identify the people we where keeping, not only to save costs but also to identify the skillset we required then see what technology we would keep and what would need replacing creating a plan and more importantly a budget for us to work to.
first off I was handed the IT budget, all £142 million of it. and managed to cut it down to £11 Million, the main costs for this was a project to install fibre optic cables throughout the mine and create a metropolitan style wireless network covering the entire 26 square miles of the mine in Tonkolili. instead of contracting this out as was budgetted for we installed it ourselves.
all of the companies peers within the mining industry said the tonkolili Iron Ore projct could not be commercially viable as the country simply did not have the infrastructure required to support such a massive task with no power, no countrywide internet, patchy mobile phone coverage at best (you needed at least 2 mobile phones and even then some times it would not work) even Microsoft themselves told us our plans to create a secure private redundant network would not be possible and against all the odds, we did it, 226 miles from end to end, a world class rail system and over 17000 jobs for the nationals of Sierra Leone, the largest employer in West Africa!