Wireless Planet Unveils the LoRaWAN Community Calendar of Events

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Wireless Planet Unveils the LoRaWAN Community Calendar of Events

Admin 30 Sep 2026

LoRaWAN Community

LoRaWAN (Long Range Wide Area Network) is a leading Low Power Wide Area Network (LPWAN) protocol designed for scalable, long-range, and energy-efficient wireless communication. It is particularly suited for Internet of Things (IoT) applications such as smart agriculture, environmental monitoring, smart cities, asset tracking, and utility metering—areas critical to Africa’s sustainable development.

At Wireless Planet, we have officially unveiled the LoRaWAN Community to carry out year-round workshops and forums with academic, industry and the startup communities in Kenya and in other countries in Africa to cover the various aspects that address the gaps and present opportunities of LoRaWAN and the wider Low Power Wide Area Network (LPWAN) ecosystem. 

Some of the key gaps and opportunities that the Community would tackle and demonstrate include:

GapsOpportunities
  • Network Coverage: Limited LoRaWAN gateway deployment in Africa, especially outside urban centers.
  • Ecosystem Fragmentation: Few coordinated communities or platforms for knowledge exchange and project incubation.
  • Awareness and Skills: Low awareness among students, researchers, and local companies about LoRaWAN’s capabilities and use cases.
  • Access to Hardware: Difficulty in sourcing affordable LoRaWAN devices, sensors, and gateways for prototyping and research.
  • Policy and Spectrum: Regulatory uncertainty regarding unlicensed spectrum use, and lack of national guidelines for LPWAN deployments.
  • Industry Adoption: Hesitancy or lack of expertise among enterprises and startups to integrate LoRaWAN into their service offerings.

 

  • Africa’s Development Needs: LoRaWAN is ideal for rural and resource-constrained environments—offering connectivity for agriculture, wildlife, environmental, and infrastructure monitoring.
  • Cost Efficiency: Low deployment and operating costs make LoRaWAN attractive for community networks, municipalities, and SMEs.
  • Academic Engagement: Universities and technical institutes can leverage LoRaWAN for research, student projects, and innovation.
  • Industry-Driven Innovation: Startups, telcos, and system integrators partnering to develop vertical solutions for various sectors.
  • Policy Influence: A coordinated community that advocates for enabling spectrum policy and standards harmonisation.

 

 

The LoRaWAN Community targets to:

  1. Coordinate open LoRaWAN gateways in key African cities, campuses, and rural innovation centres as community infrastructure.
  2. Offer free/low-cost access for academic, research, and pilot projects.
  3. Map and regularly update the coverage of the community gateways.
  4. Collaboratively run Workshops & Bootcamps: Hands-on sessions for students, researchers, and professionals on LoRaWAN fundamentals, device programming, network design, and deployment.
  5. Host repositories for open-source LoRaWAN code, toolkits, and project documentation.
  6. Operate a collaborative knowledge base and Q&A forums for troubleshooting and peer support.
  7. Share real-world datasets (anonymised) from deployed sensors for academic and public use.
  8. Engage with regulators to promote understanding of spectrum and regulatory considerations for LPWANs.
  9. Publish policy briefs and recommendations based on community experience and research outcomes.

  10. Participate in global LoRaWAN standardisation and alliance activities.

     

Our 2026/2027 Community Events and Forums will feature the following:

  • The Annual LoRaWAN Africa Summit that will showcase projects, share best practices, invite international experts/collaborators, and host policy dialogues. This is planned to take place in April, 2nd 2027, in Nairobi.
  • Meetups and Tech Talks: Monthly community gatherings for networking, demos, and knowledge exchange. We've released the dates in our LoRaWAN Calendar of Events section on our website.
  • Open Innovation Challenges: Thematic competitions (e.g., Smart Cities, AgriTech, Climate) with industry sponsorship and incubation support. In 2027, we have two planned Open Innovation Challenges taking place in March and June 2027. The dates will be announced in January 2027.

 

Wireless Planet officially leads the LoRaWAN Community, with Strathmore University as the anchor institution. The Community will have a steering committee representing academia, industry, policy advocacy groups, startup ecosystem and the student community selected across the African Continent. The membership is open to all students, researchers and entrepreneurs working on Internet of Things (IoT) innovation that is based on LoRaWAN. 

 

The expected outcomes and impact of the community is:

  • Widespread LoRaWAN network coverage supporting national and regional IoT innovation.
  • Growth of a skilled generation of African makers in LPWAN and IoT technologies.
  • Increased collaboration between universities, industry, and the regulatory authorities.
  • Real-world solutions across multiple sectors. 
  • Evidence-based policy reform for LPWAN spectrum and IoT adoption.
  • Positioning Kenya and Africa as leaders in community-driven, sustainable IoT ecosystems.

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