LinkNet / Macha Works — Zambia's Community-Owned Mesh Network and Rural ICT Academy

In 2004, residents of Macha, a remote village in Zambia's Southern Province with no mobile-phone coverage, formed the multipurpose cooperative Macha Works and its technical arm, LinkNet, to build the community its own internet connection - three years before commercial mobile networks reached the area.
LinkNet's network runs on two VSAT satellite links used as shared backbone gateways, feeding a redundant mesh Wi-Fi network of interlinked, self-healing nodes so that no single dish or router failure takes the whole network down. A modified shipping container serves as the technical hub, housing a telecentre and community radio station, with connectivity reaching the local hospital, schools and a community centre.
The network is credited with giving rural schools and the hospital reliable communication and internet access, supporting agriculture, education, health-service coordination and cultural documentation, and creating local employment. Since 2004, LinkNet's Information Technology Academy (LITA) has trained community members as ICT technicians, and the cooperative model has since been extended to additional villages in Zambia.
Peer-reviewed performance studies from the network's early years documented real constraints - expensive satellite bandwidth, unreliable power and low digital literacy among new users - and most independent coverage of the project dates to 2008-2018; more recent, quantified usage data (such as current subscriber counts) was not found in public reporting, so today's scale should be read with that gap in mind.

Read the full analysis: https://www.computerworld.com/article/1584285/zambian-community-sets-example-for-rural-connectivity.html