Named for the rain bird

The coucal is known across Southern Africa as the "rain bird," its call is said to signal rain, and with it, prosperity. We chose the name because that's what connectivity means for the communities we work with: a signal that better things are on the way.

Coucal was founded by Tim Genders in 2006, as a telecommunications consulting practice focused on one problem: bringing the unconnected online.

Why it matters

The internet has become paramount to every community, for information, for trade, for staying in touch with the world beyond a village or a township. A community without access is placed at a real, structural disadvantage next to a neighboring community that has it. Nowhere is that dichotomy clearer than in South Africa, where connected and unconnected communities often sit within a few kilometers of each other, living very different economic realities.

Coucal exists to help communities and companies realize the economic benefit of closing that gap, and to build a fairer, more connected world in doing so.

From not-for-profit to a profitable model

The work began as not-for-profit. That was a good place to learn, but it couldn't scale. Getting people online at the scale the problem demands requires a model that is profitable, not one that depends on grant cycles and donor goodwill. That shift in thinking, from charity to commercial viability, now sits behind everything Coucal proposes to the operators and communities it works with.

Where we've worked

Founder

Tim Genders

Founder, Coucal

Tim is a UK citizen with an engineering master's degree from St Peter's College, Oxford University. He has spent over 20 years working in African telecommunications, building community networks across the continent, and founded Coucal in 2006.