IESC Geekcorps staff and volunteers in Mali designed a Desert PC to withstand a high heat, high dust, low electricity environment. It is the first rugged PC custom built from available parts to survive the harsh desert environment of northern Mali and provide affordable Internet access for a remote community there. While the individual technologies used to build it are not new, the configuration, location, and application are new and unique.

Lack of access to quality information is a particularly acute problem in Mali. The vast, multi-lingual, relatively poor, and disproportionately illiterate nation cannot rely on newspapers or television to spread information. Radios are the medium of choice—they are relatively affordable, run on batteries instead of electricity, and don’t require users to be literate.

USAID developed a Special Objective called Communication for Development to improve access to quality information through improved communication infrastructure. The Geekcorps Mali Community Radio project was funded by this special objective to work with select community radio stations. In 2005 USAID Mali and partners like Geekcorps made special efforts to bring radio to the rural north, where nomadic populations remain largely isolated and are often marginalized from community, political participation, etc.

One of Geekcorps’ partner radio stations was Radio Beeray, a private radio established by Africare in Bourem Inaly, a village in the remote northern region of Mali. Bourem Inaly is only accessible by boat after a 30-minute drive from Timbuktu, which itself is two days’ drive from the capital in a good SUV. Public transportation takes days longer.

IESC Geekcorps sought to develop technology solutions and business models that would give the remote community of Bourem Inaly access to new information and communications tools, including:

- Computers able to operate in high heat, high dust environments with low electricity
- Affordable Internet access

Geekcorps’ first challenge was to find a computer capable of withstanding the heat and dust of northern Mali, on the fringes of the Sahara desert. A ready-made system was not commercially available, so Geekcorps experts designed an innovative system, which they dubbed the Desert PC, using off-the-shelf hardware components and free, open source software.

The Desert PC is a sealed, fanless system based on VIA Technologies’ Mini-ITX form factor. It has a heatpipe for passive cooling, a solid state disk to eliminate moving parts, and a Linux distribution, Kunnafonix, customized by IESC Geekcorps to minimize the number of disk writes.

While regular computers consume approximately 300 watts, the Desert PC (including the screen) normally consumes only 35 watts or less of power, with a peak value of 60 watts. I.e., it uses less power than a 60-watt light bulb. Low power consumption makes it suitable for low energy sources like solar panels; IESC Geekcorps reengineered existing solar panels while on site in Bourem Inaly to increase their efficiency by 20-30%. (The Desert PC Spec Sheet PDF)

While the cost of the Desert PC can be $300 more than an equivalent regular computer, its total cost of ownership is lower, because it consumes much less electricity and requires fewer solar panels, both significant costs in Mali.

After IESC Geekcorps developed the Desert PC, the team developed a new low-cost model using Internet service from Regional Broadband Global Area Network (RBGAN) small satellite systems. They disabled graphics and installed loband to reduce bandwidth consumption by 5-20%, reducing the cost of RBGAN service (which is billed per kilobyte) by 80-95%.

The Desert PC system and loband RBGAN Internet connection brought tangible results to the isolated community of Bourem Inaly:

• The staff of Radio Beeray has access to quality information via the Internet, and as a result, the entire community gets better information from the community radio.
• The increased efficiency of the solar power system resulted in more electricity, which increased radio transmission and lighting usage by two to four hours per day.
• Because the staff no longer has to travel to cyber cafés to send email, etc., Radio Beeray was able to reduce monthly operating costs by nearly US$100. With these savings the station could afford to hire a new staff member.
• Radio Beeray is able to afford independent maintenance of the system.

Based on the Desert PC’s success throughout the pilot, it was proposed for future rural area Internet access, including all remote Africare sites, and to sites in Niger.

Since its installation the Desert PC has also drawn considerable interest from the press and private enterprise, including a partnership with VIA Technologies, the manufacturer of key components of the system.

VIA sent a representative to visit the pilot site in late November 2005 to see the system at work and subsequently launched a technology innovation center to develop PHD appliances—computers designed to address problems of power, heat, and dust.

More information can be found on the Desert PC Communication System Spec Sheet (1.4MB PDF), the Geekcorps Mali website, or in the Geekcorps Mali Two-Year Report.

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