At the ongoing 2023 Mobile World Congress, Huawei made history by announcing that it has extended its innovation streak to mineral extraction by using 5G technology to connect all mining equipment at Botswana’s Jwaneng mine, creating the world’s first 5G-oriented smart diamond mine. The Chief Technology Officer of Huawei Mine BU, Xu Jun, explained that the company’s ICT technologies such as 5G, cloud, AI and IoT were used to develop smart mine solutions based on an industrial internet architecture.
“In this instance, Botswana’s Debswana and Huawei jointly established the world’s first 5G-oriented smart diamond mine. Located in Jwaneng, it uses hardware equipment, including base stations for a holistic digital transformation solution designed to support network upgrades to 5G cutting-edge technologies like autonomous driving”, said Jun.
The private network solution developed by Huawei provides stable connectivity for the Jwaneng mine, connecting more than 260 equipment, including drilling rigs, excavators, heavy trucks and pickup trucks. This enables interconnection between the mine’s production, safety and security systems. Molemisi Nelson Sechaba, Debswana’s Head of Information Management, explained that the new system replaces their previous limited coverage public wireless frequencies system that had less robust anti-interference capabilities.
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“Previously, our company had a system that had limited coverage, used public wireless frequencies and had less robust anti-interference capabilities. As a result, the mine’s different types of data could not be transferred stably in real time”, said Sechaba.
Thulagano M. Segokgo, Botswana’s Minister of Communications, Knowledge, and Technology, praised the development, while Liao Yong, Vice President of Huawei Sub-Saharan Africa Region, emphasized the significance of mining in the social and economic advancement of several Sub-Saharan African countries.
