Following the country’s independence in 2011, the Emergency Telecommunications Cluster (ETC) was activated in South Sudan, under the leadership of the World Food Programme (WFP), to provide security communications, internet connectivity and coordination services to the humanitarian community.
As a major component of the then named ‘ETC Response Solution’, emergency.lu was deployed to Bentiu and Maban in South Sudan in January 2012 to provide high-speed internet connectivity to thousands of humanitarian actors responding to the crisis. Over the years, additional equipment was shipped to South Sudan and, by December 2016, emergency.lu, together with its partners ETC, WFP and Ericsson Response, provided services in 8 different sites.
After six years of response in South Sudan, the Emergency Telecommunications Cluster (ETC) demobilised its services, transitioning to local providers and to cost-sharing solutions. Over the operation’s lifespan, the ETC provided services in 23 humanitarian sites to over 5,000 humanitarian actors from more than 200 organisations.
