Case Study: Mesh Sayada

The Sayada community network, Mesh Sayada, is a collaboratively designed and built wireless network. The town of Sayada is located on the Tunisian coast, 140 kilometers from Tunis. The network serves as a platform for locally-hosted content, such as Wikipedia and Open Street Maps, and is expected to expand to include locally created content. Local residents and CLibre, a Sayada-based free technology association, initiated the network in December, 2013.

Over a four day workshop, community members from Sayada and interested people and groups from around Tunisia came together to build the first network links and set up a community server. Much like a barn raising, community members came together for a common purpose and contributed different skills — building mounts for routers, identifying ideal rooftops, reaching out to neighbors, setting up and administering a server, designing the server portal, crimping Ethernet cables, configuring routers, teaching others, and leading children’s activities in order to build a shared digital resource.

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