When each connection counts: How Cisco expertise helps humanitarian response

Dependable web entry will not be the very first thing that involves thoughts when you consider humanitarian responses. However, for the UN Refugee Company (UNHCR) and its companions responding to pressing wants at Musenyi refugee camp, connectivity is a crucial 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 have 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) workforce reached out to CCR in late March 2025, the ask was clear: design and deploy a community answer for Musenyi that might join a number of websites throughout troublesome terrain and in harsh outside situations, with restricted present infrastructure to construct on. There was no underground fiber cabling, no dependable mobile sign, and no viable option to run bodily cables throughout the terrain. The answer needed to work in situations that may defeat normal networking tools.

For the primary time, CCR deployed Cisco’s industrial-grade wi-fi expertise in an energetic humanitarian discipline operation — and the situations at Musenyi have 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 toes aside and not using a single cable within the floor. A lot of it had been pre-configured earlier than the workforce left for Burundi, minimizing setup time on arrival.

As soon as on the bottom, the CCR workforce labored carefully with UNHCR’s native IT employees to improve Musenyi’s community and broaden connectivity throughout the positioning, linking key amenities and enabling extra environment friendly coordination throughout aid businesses.

“The very first thing we did after we bought to Musenyi was place an antenna at elevation, so it may broadcast concurrently to a number of hubs throughout the positioning beneath,” explains Matt Altman, CCR’s technical chief in programs engineering. “The purpose-to-multipoint functionality was important right here, as a result of it meant we may join the well being middle, college, the primary operations middle, and amenities with out working a single bodily cable.”

From discipline operations to household calls: Placing the community to work

For humanitarian employees, dependable connectivity is crucial 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 may register new arrivals extra effectively, whereas well being employees may seek the advice of with distant specialists to assist households get the medical care they want. UN businesses and native companions may share real-time details about medical wants, meals distributions, and safety instances. Coordination throughout businesses may occur extra simply over safe video calls, liberating up priceless time and assets.

For the refugee and host group, the community opened a distinct sort 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 every day operations whereas refugees use the opposite connection; at night time, automated scripts reconfigure the community, rendering the complete capability of each connections obtainable to the group to allow them to entry info and join with family members.

Underpinning all of it’s a safety structure designed to maintain delicate info secure with out limiting entry for many who want it. Cisco Id Companies Engine (ISE) provides UNHCR’s IT workforce exact management over who can entry what: companion NGOs onboard via a self-service portal, and delicate programs — comparable to refugee registration information, safety case information, and medical information — stay protected all through. Cisco SecureConnect layers DNS filtering, firewall safety, and net safety throughout all customers, defending each humanitarian operations and the refugee group from on-line threats. And with Cisco Meraki’s cloud-managed dashboard, CCR engineers can monitor community well being and resolve points remotely, whereas native UNHCR IT employees educated through the deployment deal with day-to-day administration on the bottom.

“When outfitted with the appropriate expertise, humanitarian groups can give attention to supporting households and managing pressing wants,” says Kevin Murphy, CCR operations supervisor.

“Finally, our purpose is to offer the positioning managers with the instruments and coaching they should keep environment friendly, related, and safe. It’s rewarding to see our options assist others ship assist extra successfully and join communities that have 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 have been higher outfitted to reply. To maintain tempo with the positioning’s evolving wants, we additionally shipped Cisco-donated tools from UNHCR’s emergency stockpile in Geneva to Burundi whereas persevering with to acquire extra supplies and coordinate a follow-up deployment.

Past the bandwidth: The human affect of connectivity throughout occasions of disaster

The progress at Musenyi is an indication of what’s attainable when the appropriate expertise meets the appropriate 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 workforce 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 fairly than looking via stacks of paper information, to the household separated throughout borders who can lastly see one another’s faces on a display screen: dependable connectivity modifications 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 take care of connections to household, to entry info, to have a voice,” he displays. “It’s a reminder that one of the significant issues we will do with Cisco expertise is to verify — even in occasions of disaster when every little thing else is unsure — that assist, hope, and human connection are at all times inside attain.”