Mr Ishmael Kebbay Jr, just one year in office as Managing Director of Sierra Leone Cable Limited (SALCAB), has transformed the SALCAB from a loss-making institution into a profit-oriented entity. What is more, Mr Kebbay and his team are pushing hard to take internet connectivity to every nook and cranny in Sierra Leone, in line with President Maada Bio’s vision to make provision for every Sierra Leonean to have access to internet connectivity. In this interview with Kelechi Deca, he speaks on the telecom’s vision of Sierra Leone.
Would you say that SALCAB is focused on fulfilling its mandate?
SALCAB is fully focused and committed to fulfilling its mandate. SALCAB’s primary mandate is to ensure fast and reliable internet connectivity throughout Sierra Leone at an affordable cost. I can confidently say that we are working on fulfilling our mandate. We have re-calibrated the business model which has reduced the price of wholesale data by 48%, increased data utilization/uptake by 100% from a monthly average of 8G to 16G, and increased monthly revenue by 32%. The 48% price reduction has directly impacted on the end-users as all the Mobile Network Operators (MNOs) have reduced data prices. This is one of the many steps we are taking to fulfill our mandate.
How would you assess SALCAB’s commitment to building a digital future for Sierra Leone?
SALCAB remains fully committed to building a digital future for Sierra Leone. One of our driving pillars is innovation and it has been manifested through two big projects we launched this year — the SALCAB tech Start-up Challenge and the School Connectivity Project. The SALCAB TECH start-up challenge is aimed at driving individuals to think outside-the-box and be innovative, and investing in our most valuable resource as a country, which is our human capital. The competition offers a seed capital prize of $5000 to the top three innovative tech start-up businesses and also a three-month incubation program to further develop their business models and make them investment-ready. We live in a digital world. H.E (Rtd) Brig. Julius Maada Bio (President of Sierra Leone) is extremely passionate about building a sustainable digital future for Sierra Leone which will subsequently ensure sustainable economic growth. We launched the School Connectivity Project which will be providing internet to schools and public libraries as a support to the President’s flagship School Connectivity Program and to also support the President’s priority of building a sustainable digital future for the country.
The School Connectivity Project is critical to the actualization of President Maada Bio’s Human Capital Development programme. To what extent would you say that SALCAB has gone in this regard?
Our School Connectivity Project fully supports the President’s Human Capital Development agenda. The School Connectivity Project will be connecting 500 government & government-assisted schools, and 16 public libraries by the end of 2019. A school management system will be deployed in 100 of the 500 schools, along with computer labs. 250,000 students will benefit from the first phase of the project. The project will further connect 1000 schools and all public hospitals and health centers across the country by 2023. Teachers and students will have access to fast and reliable internet which will further expose them to the digital world and drive them towards thinking outside the box.
We will be launching our Secondary school and university engagements on the use of the internet next year. The primary message we are trying to drive is the use of the internet beyond social media.
What level of feedback did you get from the Special Technical Audit Report on SALCAB and the Telecom Sector? How will that help you to deliver on your mandate?
The Special Technical Audit Report gave people real time data on the business portfolio we inherited. When my management took over operations of SALCAB in August 2018, we inherited a negative portfolio with a cumulative loss of SLE 3.8 billion from January to July 2018, a debt exposure of SLE 58 billion, with a less than 47% monthly revenue collection penetration. With this trend, the business would have gone into administration in three months; because the cash flow and liquidity position was not sufficient to sustain monthly operating expenditures, let alone to undertake any CAPEX outflows. In less than six months we were able to turn the company around with a profit of over SLE 10 billion by the end of 2018. This reinforced our commitment to fulfilling our mandate whilst maintaining our zero corruption and fair business practice policy.
SALCAB claims it has activated physical fiber point of presence in 28 cities (from Freetown to Guinea and Liberia borders respectively). How has this helped to provide access for operators to transport large amount of data cheaper, and faster?
We inherited a network that was in a terrible shape of design. The challenges included no spares to support service recovery in the event of a downtime, no national and International redundancy; the entire country only had one circuit going up north to Lisbon.
In less than six months, we deployed two international redundancies in Paris and Accra (added to Lisbon) that earned the business an uptime of 99.9999%. We have re-designed the terrestrial fibre network to help operators transport a large amount of data cheaper and faster. We activated a fibre point of presence in 28 provincial cities and townships that helped operators such as Qcell to roll out their network at the back of the fibre backbone. Qcell has the cheapest data rates in the market. We are also migrating existing operators such as Afcom, Orange, and Onlime to the terrestrial fibre.
What plans do you have to ensure you operate a resilient network, increase connectivity penetration and deliver +1 customer experience?
We would launch phase 2 of the National Fibre Backbone (NFB) soon. Phase 2 of the NFB will ensure direct fibre connectivity throughout the country which will enable operators to transport data cheaper and faster and will increase internet penetration. We are also working on creating other international and national redundancies, for example, Bintumani to Lungi to serve as a redundancy to Jui to Masiaka. These redundancies will make the network more robust and resilient; they’ll enable us to continue to deliver quality services to our clients which will subsequently be enjoyed by the end-users.
Kelechi Deca
Kelechi Deca has over two decades of media experience, he has traveled to over 77 countries reporting on multilateral development institutions, international business, trade, travels, culture, and diplomacy. He is also a petrol head with in-depth knowledge of automobiles and the auto industry.