Kwiizya

Abstract

Cellular networks have revolutionized the way people communicate in rural areas. At the same time, deployment of commercial-grade cellular networks in areas with low population density, such as in rural sub-Saharan Africa, is prohibitively expensive relative to the return of investment. As a result, 48% of the rural population in Africa remains disconnected. To address this problem, we design a local cellular network architecture, Kwiizya, that provides basic voice and text messaging services in rural areas. We deployed an instance of Kwiizya in the rural village of Macha in Zambia. In this video we present interviews with people from the Macha community talking about their use of cellphones. We also present footage from the installation of Kwiizya in Macha.