Helping the Rhino Population to Grow with IoT Connectivity.

Rhino Conservation Botswana (RCB) is an independent Trust, working in close partnership with the Government of Botswana’s Department of Wildlife and National Parks. RCB has been operational since 2016 with a mandate to effectively monitor and assist manage the wild rhino populations of the Okavango Delta; to achieve rhino populations of black and white rhino that are growing and thriving in the Okavango Delta. 

In the past decade poachers have killed more than 8,200 rhinos in South Africa. Today the rhino population hangs in the balance with less than 21,000 white rhinos and 5,500 black rhinos in existence.  

To help keep the team stay safe on patrols and to track their activities and movements throughout the Okavango Delta’s vast landscape, RCB use tracking devices across their vehicle fleet. These trackers are incredibly important because of the data they provide on distance, time and for vehicle upkeep. They inform which areas have been patrolled – and when – and identify who is closest to respond to an incident in the game reserve.  

RCB previously worked with other tracking devices on the market before approaching Online Solutions for a bespoke purpose-built hardware solution in 2019. Online Solutions resells Eseye’s AnyNet Secure SIM to their customers in Botswana, providing them with a scalable and highly secure IoT managed service. 

The Okavango Delta covers an area of 15,000 square kilometres and is the largest inland delta in the world.  This unique, pulsing wetland can prove challenging at times when it floods seasonally, but its vast plains provide a lush oasis for wildlife. Unsurprisingly, given these facts, connectivity can be somewhat challenging too.

In Botswana there are only three mobile network operators providing cellular coverage. Without a Mobile Virtual Network Operator (MVNO) to guide them, RCB negotiated their own connectivity with one mobile network provider which left them experiencing unreliable connectivity, poor network coverage and therefore reduced tracking device uptime. 

RCB’s trackers are permanently affixed to the patrol vehicles and traverse across the delta’s rough terrain. RCB sought a cellular connectivity solution which would integrate seamlessly with their tracker’s hardware and provide a robust, long-term remedy to the challenging connectivity coverage in the area.  

Eseye’s AnyNet Secure SIM cards empowered RCB to take back control of their connectivity. By design the AnyNet Secure SIM enables IoT devices to agnostically connect to over 700 mobile networks, so, we utilised this multi-IMSI capability to steer RCB’s devices onto another local mobile network operator (MNO) in Botswana to deliver extended coverage and higher connectivity uptime.