In recognition of his outstanding performance as a game changer at the once moribund Sierra Leone Cable (SALCAB), on Saturday 2nd March, 2019, the SALCAB Managing Director, Ishmael Mohamed Kebbay Jnr., received an award from Sierra Ovation Awards as one of the Top 100 Most Influential People in Sierra Leone.

SALCAB’s new MD who was appointed as part of President Bio’s youth inclusion policy to inject dynamism, sound education and innovation into governance, has spearheaded a rapid transformation in the national telecoms infrastructure. This is in fulfilment of the country’s much deeded infrastructural and socioeconomic development plan.

MD Kebbay is of high caliber IT specialist with over fifteen years’ experienceimplementing global projects in developed and emerging markets.
Consequently, Ishmael Kebbay Jnr’s contributions is a support to President Bio’svision of transforming Sierra Leone into a digitally driven economy, accelerating economic growth, building a sustainable and resilient GDP, supporting emerging and existing businesses and opening Sierra Leone to new international opportunities.

Since he took over as SALCAB’s MD, Mr. Kebbay has transformed the agency from a Three Billion Leones loss-incurring business into a thriving profit-making public business.

He has also reduced the wholesale price of Internet bandwidth by 48%, which created a positive retail effect and subsequently caused an increase in uptake of total national broadband from 8GB to over 20GB.

He has activated a physical fibre cable and point of presence in 28 townships and district headquarters in Sierra Leone which allows operators to transport data cheaper and faster.

This has resulted in increase in data penetration from 13% to about 15% - an effective way of ensuring data is affordable and that data penetration increases.

The activation and rollout of the terrestrial fibre and point of presence in major cities and townships also supported new entrant QCELL to roll out their network using the national fibre backbone as their major transmission resource.
Ishmael Kebbay Jnr who recognizes the challenges in the sector is actively working on turning them into opportunities.

One of the fundamental problems in the industry is the 1.7 million unconnected clienteles in the country. He sees this as an opportunity to drive rural connectivity and ensure that a fibre infrastructure is created in every major township and district in the country, be it commercially viable or not because he believes that connectivity is a way of life and a fundamental human right.

Accordingly, he has tailored SALCAB’s commercial model not to lean heavily towards net profit making but prioritizes its social responsibility of ensuring that everyone is connected.

A consummate CEO with his eyes clearly on what has to be achieved; he outlined his vision shortly after taking up office to enhance continued ICT development in the country.

“Our main objective is to impulse the ICT sector in Sierra Leone, but doing it in all possible lines of action. First of all, we will work together with operators and government to increase access to telecommunication services, extend network coverage and facilitate inclusion providing easy access for operators (our clients).

Secondly, we will support the ICT industry development inside the country, with the creation of Data Centre where a major interconnection point would be located, and where local and foreign content can be hosted within our country to provide services to our citizens and neighbouring markets. This action will assure the development of an ecosystem for local content creation, online services, and new start-up companies to increase the share of ICT within Sierra Leone GDP and will provide a vital platform for the implant of e-Government and E-Administration in the country. And, of course, we will keep developing knowledge among Sierra Leone students, through connecting schools and universities to internet and e-learning platform.”

The MD further revealed SALCAB’s moves towards cost reduction of communications in Sierra Leone saying different factors are contributing to increasing prices for telecom services in Africa, and not all of them are under SALCAB’s control. He assured that SALCAB will push hard to reduce operators' cost in all services received including Internet connection and national and international connectivity. “We will continue to encourage operators to translate these cost reductions to the final users and not keep it only to increase their benefits.”

Beyond Sierra Leone, the MD outlined the essential for partnerships with continental telecoms providers saying it is critical to have a second international connection to serve as a redundancy link in our connectivity.

“Another important point is to develop a West Africa LAN, helping operators to deliver connectivity services all around West Africa. This will help Pan-African corporations to have good quality connectivity services between their local companies and also will develop an essential role in connecting universities and research centres all over the region. We are working to raise agreements to have points of presence in other countries to facilitate this LAN connectivity for all Sierra Leone Telecom Operators.”

The MD also looks forward to an optimistic futurein the ICT sector he said offers an exciting time for SALCAB for the many opportunities and challenges that the company will face in the near future. “We definitely see it with enthusiasm and desire to put all our efforts to develop ICT in Sierra Leone and the whole West Africa region.”

Finding SALCAB in what the Chairman called a messy state, under Mr. Kebbay, the new management has put in place a robust system of accountability and establishing reporting lines in the management cadre that has enabled SALCAB to clear the mess that was left behind by the previous management team, including recruiting special auditors “to do proper audit of what was inherited.”

Reporting on the progress made, Mr. Kebbay said: “Since my administration took over the management of Sierra Leone Cable Limited, we have re-engineered the business models of the submarine and the terrestrial infrastructure which churned out a 48% reduction in the cost of bandwidth for IP transit and IP lease circuits respectively.”

He added that SALCAB has over 1,000km of fibre optic cables running from Freetown to Jendema, from Masiaka to Gbalamuya, and from Makeni to Kono and officially launching new national fibre bundles that allow clients to ride on the fibre cable to connect their backhaul base stations and enhance transmission and distribution of data.

His administration has also implemented steps to strengthen the business environment that they inherited and mitigate probable operational risks by commissioning a baseline review and forensic audit of the entire business operations and network infrastructure immediately when he commenced operation.
Under him, SALCAB continues to strengthen its business environment by rolling out critical financial controls policies and framework, human resource policies and strategic plan to attract rich industry talents and position a healthy staff retention rate because he believes in the value of talent to drive the holistic aspirations saying his administration is aiming towards making SALCAB one of the best places to work.

He added that his dream of providing service is not limited to Sierra Leone only as SALCAB has aspirations to offer services to the sub-region by attracting CAPEX investment that will allow the company to deploy a second submarine cable that will serve as a redundancy to the ACE cable; a capability that he says will enable his company offer regional redundancy service to Liberia, Guinea, and other markets through the ECOWEAN network.
MrKebbay revealed that free internet to schools and colleges, targeting 100 schoolson a pilot phase with funding from the World Bankis on-going for 10 schools and universities. Students, particularly those from less-privileged homes, benefit from free internet connectivity, in line with the New Direction’s governance philosophy.

On Monday 27th May, 2019, SALCAB officials revealed that they were set to take internet connectivity to 500 schools, colleges and 15 public hospitals, under their 'Project One Access', in line with President Bio's vision of improving on human capital development.
On July 16th, 2019, a SALCAB team undertook a follow up week-long survey to 92 selected schools in various towns in the provinces that are now set to benefit from free internet connectivity ahead of the next academic year.

The first phase of the 'Project One Access', targets 500 schools, colleges and 15 public schools that by 2023, would target 1,000 schools, major public health centres as well as communities that can rely on the platform to explore internet and social media facilities.

"We aim to connect 500 schools plus 16 district libraries with free quality internet in the first phase of this project. Schools, colleges and public hospitals, which are in 34 kilometres of SALCAB's points-of-presence, will benefit from this program across the country. We will also repair 23 kilometres of damaged fibre optic cables that were destroyed during the construction of the Sewafe-Koidu road in Kono district," Mr. Kebbay said.
SALCAB, through the Ministry of Finance, will secure from China's Eximbank US$34 million to complete the deployment of the fibre network to more provincial cities townships.

Adel Suliman, Afcom's Chief Executive Officer (CEO), SALCAB's partner, through the Public-Private-Partnership (PPP), said 'Project One Access' is to support the government's free quality education. He said once the first phase of this project would have been implemented, there would be online learning materials, which would subsequently reduce learning deficiencies in schools.

Another SALCAB's partner, Mahmoud Idriss, CEO of Niche-Technologies, said it takes vision and sense of purpose for SALCAB to embark on such project, noting that when this project would have been implemented, what is happening in the physical forms, would be put into digital ones for students to learn faster, noting that there are some teachers and pupils who have never touched computers but would get access to such during the implementation of the project.

The foregoing deliverables highlight a tremendous efforts by the company in one year of Mr. Kebbay in office. He has helped the New Direction Government and its Ministry of Information and Communications to achieve their core mandate and vision of, one: providing the people of Sierra Leone with reliable and timely public information; promote the development of information and communications infrastructure; and ensure the availability of accessible, efficient, reliable and affordable ICT services with the purpose of enhancing the quality of life of the people of Sierra Leone and contribute to the socio-economic development of the country; and two: transforming Sierra Leone into a competitive and prosperous country, through the development, expansion and innovative use of information and communications Technologies.