Botswana’s Debswana and Huawei have jointly announced the world’s first 5G-oriented smart diamond mine project at MWC Barcelona 2023. By the time of reveal, the Huawei-enabled smart mining solution has already been deployed in Botswana.
Debswana’s Head of Information Management Molemisi Nelson Sechaba said that the Huawei-enabled smart mine solution has been deployed at Debswana’s Jwaneng open-pit diamond mine, and the project started operation in December 2021.
According to the Debswana head of Information Molemisi Nelson, the project started in December 2021 and Huawei’s 4G eLTE private network solution provides stable connectivity for the Jwaneng mine in Botswana.
It connects more than 260 pieces of equipment which includes drilling rigs, excavators, heavy trucks, and pickup trucks. This enables the interconnection between the mine’s production, safety and security systems.
Hon. Thulagano M. Segokgo, Minister of Communications, Knowledge and Technology of Botswana, stated that, the Government of Botswana is pleased to see Debswana and Huawei’s joint efforts aimed at driving digital transformation in the mining industry.
Xu Jun, Chief Technology Officer of Huawei Mine BU, said that Huawei is committed to using its strengths in ICT technologies like 5G, cloud, AI, and IoT to develop smart mine solutions that are based on an industrial Internet architecture for customers in the mining industry worldwide.
Liao Yong, Vice President of Huawei Sub-Saharan Africa Region, said that mining is the economic backbone for many Sub-Saharan African countries and plays an important role in the economy of Africa as a whole.
Over the past five years, Huawei has provided services to mining enterprises in several countries including South Africa, Botswana, Zambia, Namibia, and Ghana. Looking to the future, Huawei aims at working with more local partners to accelerate mining digital transformation and create more value in Africa.
According to Debswana, building on the success of the project in the Jwaneng mine deployed together with Huawei and Botswana local companies, the company plans to extend the smart mining solution in its Orapa, Damtshaa, and Letlhakane mines across the country in 2023.
EDITOR’s NOTE: Part of this story is from an official press release shared with the Tech Point Magazine team.