Mobile Meetings Series – ICT for development: how mobile technologies can support the EU development policy ‘Agenda for Change’

Mobile is the predominant infrastructure in emerging markets and new technologies are enabling development across a variety of sectors and allowing greater access to impactful services for many underserved people.

For example, mobile technologies can support access to health information in rural areas and provide banking support and access to capital for populations in underserved communities. With the expansion of mobile networks in emerging markets, energy is also being provided to remote villages, lighting homes and powering key services such as clinics and vaccine fridges. The growth of base station deployments is estimated to save over 422 million litres of diesel per year and 1.4 million tons of carbon emissions, while connecting 27 million rural inhabitants to the mobile network.

As the EU looks to make its development aid more impactful for underserved populations, the GSMA event aimed at demonstrating the potential of mobile technologies and ICT to support the EU’s ‘Agenda for Change’.