Last year, the Mobile for Development (M4D) Utilities programme awarded 21 grants to organisations working to improve or increase access to basic utility services – energy, water and sanitation – in underserved communities. This week, we would like to celebrate the recognition that some of our grantees have received at competitive international forums.
Dialog Axiata, in partnership with the Lanka Electricity Company (LECO), is introducing prepaid metering to Sri Lanka to help customers who prefer to pay in small instalments. The project will also enable customers to monitor their energy consumption using SMS and mobile apps to promote conservation and shift demand to off-peak hours. Finally, the project will improve network reliability to comply with national regulations. This will be achieved through an IoT-enabled smart metering and distribution network monitoring platform over Dialog’s GSM network. The Smart modem with prepaid functionality for the smart meters and the network monitoring device are developed by Dialog Mobile Communication Laboratory – University of Moratuwa. LECO was awarded the best presentation award at the Asian Utility Week 2016 conference for its paper titled, ‘Implementation of prepaid system for distribution utilities using MNO-based IoT platform‘.
Dr. P.S.N. De Silva, Head of Engineering at LECO, says,
“Our project is unusual in that an MNO and a Utility have moved out of their silos and are jointly developing a platform to innovate new solutions. In fact, when LECO and Dialog submitted the proposal to the GSMA, the GSMA’s analysis of its potential was the pivotal decision that made this concept come to fruition.”
Safe Water Network provides healthy water access to over 600,000 people in Ghana and India so that communities can live, learn and thrive. Their Safe Water Stations run as small local businesses, providing dependable treated safe water to the community at an affordable price. GSMA’s grant supports the development of a mobile app for station staff to provide real-time station performance monitoring, which helps to identify needed maintenance before it becomes a costly problem. The mobile app is an important leap forward in running lean, efficient business operations using digital technology rather than pen and paper records. Safe Water Network was named a Classy Award Winner as one of the top ten innovative non-profits of 2016. The Classy Awards were created to “put a spotlight on the most remarkable change makers of our generation” and Safe Water Network was honored to be selected from 1,300 nonprofit and social enterprise applicants.
ME SOLshare is creating DC nanogrids in Bangladesh by connecting households to an energy trading network. Households with a solar home system (SHS) can either buy energy or sell their excess energy, while those without an SHS can only buy energy from the grid. Each subscriber household is equipped with a machine to machine (M2M) communications-enabled meter that tracks and nets the value of the purchase and sale. Subscribers use mobile money to pay for or cash out credits. ME SOLshare was a winner of the Intersolar award in the category Outstanding Solar Project award at Intersolar Global 2016, the world’s leading exhibition series for the solar industry and its partners.
Africa Water Enterprises is repairing broken water systems and installing eWatertaps in villages in rural Gambia. Users buy eWater credit from local shopkeepers who load the credit onto the customer’s NFC tag, paying USD 0.01 per 20 litres. An app allows shopkeepers to buy water credit using Africell mobile money. Funds are used to pay for professional maintenance and repairs with the aim of overcoming the tragedy of broken water supply systems in villages. African Water Enterprises was awarded a BT Young Pioneer Award at the AbilityNet Tech4Good Awards which recognises organisations who use digital technology to improve the lives of others.
Many of our other grantees are being recognised by other award institutions and have been shortlisted for awards such as the RELEX Group Environmental Challenge and The Financial Times/International Finance Corporation Transformational Business Award in Sustainable Agriculture. We look forward to sharing many more successes and recognitions as our grantees contribute to achieving the UN’s Sustainable Development Goal 6 and Goal 7.