The biennial football tournament for nations affiliated to the Confederation of African Football (CAF) was staged at various venues across Ghana in January and February, and wrapped up in the Ghanaian capital Accra with a thrilling clash between defending champions Egypt and four-time winners Cameroon.

The 26th African Cup of Nations, boasted more big name players than ever before, was televised around the world and produced an impressive tally of 99 goals in 32 matches. The tournament was attended by numerous high-profile representatives, including CAF President, Issa Hayatou, Ghana's President John Agyekum Kuffuor and FIFA President Joseph Sepp Blatter.

With the tournament attracting worldwide coverage and high-profile international players, security was understandably a key concern for the tournament organisers, as Vincenzo Roberti, COO of Sicura, explains: "With all eyes on Ghana for the Africa Cup of Nations, ensuring the safety of players and spectators at this major event was paramount. Having previously worked with Pro Security Ghana to implement a solution ahead of the celebration of 50 years of independence in June 2007, we were once again approached to work with them.

"In this latest project we started to work on the four purpose-built stadiums around Ghana. The equipment was configured in the UK prior to being shipped and installed by Pro Security Ghana. At the two main stadia, the Ohen Djan in Accra and the Baba Yara in Kamasi, we installed 80 Bosch CCTV cameras, and a further 20 cameras at each of the smaller stadia" said Vincenzo.

"The Bosch Dinion cameras were ideally suited to this application, as they offer high quality pictures even in poor lighting conditions. In the car parks outside the stadium for example there are areas of low light, but with their 15-bit imaging technology and 540 TV-line resolution, the cameras are able to produce extremely sharp and detailed images" Vincenzo continued. "Using Sicura's bespoke software "DigiFend-NDM" platform, all of the new cameras installed at the stadia can be networked to the existing network and monitored over IP by any one of a number of local and remote monitoring control rooms situated throughout the country, which monitor all cameras across Ghana."

The project in advance of the Independence Day celebrations saw the installation of IP cameras at oil refineries, international airports, main roads, and at the Independence Square in Accra. All 200 camera images are monitored at separate monitoring control rooms, are configured with Sicura software to be able to control all of the cameras.

"This is a fully Network integrated system with distributed archive storage, and with real-time access to live and recorded content from any control room and multiple viewers at any one time. This is all possible thanks to the IP based Network that offers the ability to assign devices (Video/Audio) via its virtual matrixes controlled by DigiFend-NDM. This was the first system of its kind in Africa, and is one of the most sophisticated in Africa.

"Given the magnitude of the event and the number of high-profile international football stars, FIFA representatives and other leading dignitaries attending the tournament, this system means that together Bosch and Sicura are able to guarantee maximum security levels across every aspect, from airports to roads, and both inside and outside the stadiums," concluded Vincenzo.

Bosch's Dinion IP features an integrated IP network connection, combining all the benefits and reliability of the Dinion range with a network video server that transmits video and control data over an IP network, which means that images can be transmitted to several receivers simultaneously. Dinion IP cameras have tri-streaming technology: dual MPEG-4 and JPEG compression modes simultaneously allow a dedicated stream at one frame rate for recording and a different stream for live viewing, while JPEGS can be streamed to other devices such as a PDA.

In addition to the CCTV cameras, Sicura Systems also supplied the Bosch VIP X1600 modular, high-performance CCTV video encoders with ISCSI RAID 5 storage, and the DiBos recording system, featuring advanced MPEG-4 digital encoding technology for the highest levels of image quality, information content, and data storage efficiency.