from EMEKA OKONKWO in Abuja, Nigeria
Nigeria Bureau
ABUJA, (CAJ News) – THE Emergency Telecommunication Cluster (ETC), which spearheads the fight against terrorism in northeast Nigeria, has enlisted the services of Amazon Web Services (AWS), as it migrates its operations to the Cloud.
This is a milestone for the organisation in its making the most of technology to keep the humanitarian community connected as the West African country battles the insurgency by Islamist groups, mostly the Boko Haram.
Patrick Midy, ETC Coordinator, confirmed the deal with the American-headquartered AWS, as he spoke from the northeastern town of Maiduguri, Borno state, the epicentre of the banditry.
“Consequently, the sector transitioned the wireless Local Area Network (LAN) controller for all seven deep field locations to the new cloud services to ensure they are fully operational and accessible,” he stated.
The locations are Bama, Banki, Damasak, Dikwa, Gwoza, Monguno and Ngala.
In addition to the ETC migrating to the Cloud, some humanitarian organisations it serves are also adopting solar technology amid the power challenges in the region, caused by vandalism by Islamist groups agitating to topple local government authorities in the region.
Among these is the International Organisation for Migration (IOM).
ETC has recently supported IOM with internet connectivity to ensure remote monitoring of their newly-installed hybrid solar system deployed in Monguno and Maiduguri.
Midy discloses ETC requires US$1,2 million in funding to maintain and expand services in 12 common operational areas across north-east Nigeria this year.
The appeal is currently 47 percent funded from the rollover of funds from 2024.
It aims to upgrade and maintain the provision of data connectivity services in some eight humanitarian hubs, targeting at least 3 500 aid workers (triple the current number) from 100 local and international non-governmental and United Nations agencies.
Some 16 years into the crisis in northeastern Nigeria, communications infrastructure remains significantly affected.
It is characterised by a dearth of reliable mobile networks, especially outside of the main urban areas.
This setback is the main hindrance to enable the humanitarian response and ensure the safety of aid workers.
Migrating to the Cloud involves transferring company data, applications and other digital assets from on-premise servers to a cloud computing platform, essentially moving IT infrastructure to a remote, scalable and accessible network managed by a third-party provider.
– CAJ News