Dependable web entry is probably not the very first thing that involves thoughts when you concentrate on humanitarian responses. However, for the UN Refugee Company (UNHCR) and its companions responding to pressing wants at Musenyi refugee camp, connectivity is a essential enabler of their work.
Musenyi is situated in Burundi, a small, landlocked nation in East Africa. In 2025, 1000’s of youngsters and households arrived at Musenyi searching for security and help, putting stress on a web site that wasn’t constructed for that scale. Shelter, meals, and medical care had been among the many most pressing priorities, however none of it might be coordinated successfully with restricted web connectivity.
With so many weak individuals relying on a coordinated, efficient response, UNHCR turned to its trusted partnership with Cisco Disaster Response (CCR) to work collectively on an answer.
A primary-of-its-kind deployment: Bringing industrial-grade Cisco expertise to Musenyi
When UNHCR’s Refugee Emergency Telecommunications Sector (RETS) group reached out to CCR in late March 2025, the ask was clear: design and deploy a community resolution for Musenyi that might join a number of websites throughout troublesome terrain and in harsh out of doors circumstances, with restricted current infrastructure to construct on. There was no underground fiber cabling, no dependable mobile sign, and no viable approach to run bodily cables throughout the terrain. The answer needed to work in circumstances that might defeat customary networking tools.
For the primary time, CCR deployed Cisco’s industrial-grade wi-fi expertise in an energetic humanitarian subject operation — and the circumstances at Musenyi had been precisely what this tools was constructed for. Ruggedized to face up to warmth, mud, and rain, it created high-speed connections between websites as much as 1,000 ft aside with out a single cable within the floor. A lot of it had been pre-configured earlier than the group left for Burundi, minimizing setup time on arrival.
As soon as on the bottom, the CCR group labored carefully with UNHCR’s native IT employees to improve Musenyi’s community and broaden connectivity throughout the location, linking key services and enabling extra environment friendly coordination throughout aid companies.
“The very first thing we did once we bought to Musenyi was place an antenna at elevation, so it might broadcast concurrently to a number of hubs throughout the location under,” explains Matt Altman, CCR’s technical chief in methods engineering. “The purpose-to-multipoint functionality was important right here, as a result of it meant we might join the well being heart, college, the principle operations heart, and services with out working a single bodily cable.”
From subject operations to household calls: Placing the community to work
For humanitarian employees, dependable connectivity is essential to their day-to-day work. As soon as the upgraded wi-fi community was in place, Musenyi’s operations started to shift. UNHCR groups might register new arrivals extra effectively, whereas well being employees might seek the advice of with distant specialists to assist households get the medical care they want. UN companies and native companions might share real-time details about medical wants, meals distributions, and safety instances. Coordination throughout companies might occur extra simply over safe video calls, liberating up beneficial time and assets.
For the refugee and host neighborhood, the community opened a unique form of door. Musenyi’s two web connections — a microwave hyperlink and a low earth orbit satellite tv for pc — are allotted based mostly on time of day. Throughout enterprise hours, humanitarian employees have devoted bandwidth for day by day operations whereas refugees use the opposite connection; at evening, automated scripts reconfigure the community, rendering the complete capability of each connections out there to the neighborhood to allow them to entry info and join with family members.
Underpinning all of it’s a safety structure designed to maintain delicate info protected with out limiting entry for many who want it. Cisco Id Companies Engine (ISE) offers UNHCR’s IT group exact management over who can entry what: companion NGOs onboard by a self-service portal, and delicate methods — similar to refugee registration information, safety case information, and medical information — stay protected all through. Cisco SecureConnect layers DNS filtering, firewall safety, and internet safety throughout all customers, defending each humanitarian operations and the refugee neighborhood from on-line threats. And with Cisco Meraki’s cloud-managed dashboardCCR engineers can monitor community well being and resolve points remotely, whereas native UNHCR IT employees skilled in the course of the deployment deal with day-to-day administration on the bottom.
“When outfitted with the suitable expertise, humanitarian groups can give attention to supporting households and managing pressing wants,” says Kevin Murphy, CCR operations supervisor.
“In the end, our objective is to supply the location managers with the instruments and coaching they should keep environment friendly, linked, and safe. It’s rewarding to see our options assist others ship support extra successfully and join communities that had been beforehand out of attain.” — Kevin Murphy, CCR operations supervisor
The funding in infrastructure and hands-on coaching put Musenyi in a stronger place to deal with no matter got here subsequent. When extra households arrived within the following months, UNHCR and companions had been higher outfitted to reply. To maintain tempo with the location’s evolving wants, we additionally shipped Cisco-donated tools from UNHCR’s emergency stockpile in Geneva to Burundi whereas persevering with to obtain extra supplies and coordinate a follow-up deployment.
Past the bandwidth: The human impression of connectivity throughout instances of disaster
The progress at Musenyi is an indication of what’s attainable when the suitable expertise meets the suitable partnership, and what which means for the 1000’s of individuals relying on each. UNHCR’s operational experience paired with Cisco’s expertise and technical capabilities meant that the group was capable of co‑design an answer that was match for the context and the individuals it’s meant to serve.
From the humanitarian employee who can pull up a case file in moments somewhat than looking out by stacks of paper information, to the household separated throughout borders who can lastly see one another’s faces on a display screen: dependable connectivity adjustments what’s attainable in a disaster.
For Altman, this work isn’t merely about offering web service. “We’re giving humanitarian employees the instruments to do their jobs extra successfully whereas giving people who find themselves enduring unimaginable hardship the power to keep up connections to household, to entry info, to have a voice,” he displays. “It’s a reminder that one of the vital significant issues we are able to do with Cisco expertise is to ensure — even in instances of disaster when every thing else is unsure — that assist, hope, and human connection are at all times inside attain.”
