The South African Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) dispatched a team of 25 ICT technicians to the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) over the past few months to get the central African country`s infrastructure ready for the upcoming national elections.
The elections, which will take place on 30 July, will see a potential 26 million Congolese vote in what will be the nation`s first free parliamentary elections in many years.
"It`s been quite a challenge - there`s very little communication infrastructure. We`ve allocated R12 million to setting up IT infrastructure in the DRC," says Libisi Maphanga, CIO for the IEC.
He estimates the overall South African investment in the elections to be about R270 million, when the joint efforts of the Department of Foreign Affairs and the defence force are taken into account.
Much work still has to be done over the next 12 days, he notes, as IEC representatives are conducting workshops for local election staff, and are working to bring another 1.6 million registered voters onto the formal voters roll.
From a technical perspective, he says, the bulk of the work has entailed setting up speed-dial equipment, PCs, laptops, storage area networks, and networks using V-SAT infrastructure.
One of the problems highlighted by Maphanga is the cultural and linguistic differences between the English- and French-speaking representatives (locals and from the various organisations, one of which is the United Nations).
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