Aminata Garba, from telecommunications to the Internet of Things

After studying in Niamey (Niger), she studied in Canada, at Laval University, and obtained a Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering at McGill University in Montreal in 2009. The young woman then directed the telecoms regulator in Niger for two years. Then, she moved to Kigali as Assistant Professor at the branch of the prestigious American Carnegie-Mellon University, where she has since headed a collaborative research center.

Expert in data modeling for telecommunication, she is conducting a scientific project on “Internet of Things applied to agricultural irrigation with inexpensive tools and an automated system, without the Internet,” as she explains.  Her model will evolve after multidisciplinary research she hopes to conduct with agronomists, to take into account that “it rains a lot in Rwanda, but not everywhere or all the time”.

In addition, Aminata Garba is campaigning for the development of Internet exchange points in each country in Africa to prevent the data within the same African country transit through Europe and return, via providers who make people pay. She understands intimately the limits of African telecommunication networks and suggests improvements to be made.

Aminata has notably been Director General of the Multisectoral Regulatory Authority in Niger.  She has carried out research work for the CNRS, and was finally a member of the management committee in Afrinic, a regional register assigning IP addresses (and therefore the names of domains) in Africa.