GSMA Mobile for Development

Can mobile help solve the sanitation challenge?

This blog is the first in a series leading up to World Toilet Day, which is 19 November. In the series, we will zoom in on innovative business models leveraging digital solutions along the sanitation value chain and feature learnings from the five sanitation service ...

Technological innovation solves challenges and drives scale in Uganda

The GSMA Ecosystem Accelerator team, represented by Peter Ndichu, was in Kampala, Uganda in late October 2019. The aim of the trip was two-fold. Firstly, it was to conduct a market visit to our local portfolio start-up, Ensibuuko, and secondly to participate in Kampala ...

What is the promise of mobile money cash and voucher assistance in Jordan?

Monday 4 November, 2019 | Blog | blog | Jordan | Mobile for Humanitarian Innovation

This blog post was co-authored by Elizabeth Barnhart, Senior Cash Based Interventions (CBI) Coordinator at UNHCR Jordan. Two weeks ago, at one of the largest refugee registration centres in the Middle East and North Africa, the GSMA Mobile for Humanitarian Innovation ...

Digital inclusion is not negotiable

Around the world, digital, data and technology are changing the way we live and work. The internet is a major aspect of this shift, and is shaping business, education and communication for billions of people. Mobile technology is playing a key role in delivering these ...

Financial Inclusion Week 2019: Unleashing the power of mobile money to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals

Each year Financial Inclusion Week convenes organisations from around the world into a global conversation exploring the progress made and the remaining challenges to building a more inclusive financial ecosystem. This year we explored the theme of “Financial Inclusion: For ...

From Benin to Zimbabwe – Reflections on Connected Women’s Capacity Building engagement

Building capacity with regulators and policymakers has been at the forefront of the GSMA Connected Women’s team efforts to reduce the gender gap in mobile internet and mobile money services in low- and middle-income countries. Our course on ‘Bridging the Mobile Gender Gap’ ...

The GSMA’s Instant Payment Notification (IPN) Hub is transitioning to the industry

The GSMA created the Instant Payment Notification (IPN) Hub as an industry utility to enable pay-as-you-go (PAYG) solar providers, and other pre-paid utility service providers (e.g. energy, water and sanitation), to integrate more easily with mobile money operators across ...

Meet our portfolio start-ups: GiftedMom, Cameroon

According to the UNFPA, about 800 women worldwide die every day from pregnancy-related causes, but most of these deaths could be prevented with access to antenatal care and information, vaccinations or timely health advice. Pregnant women and nursing mothers living in ...

Mobile money: A product of choice for women to send and receive remittances

Earlier this year, I had the privilege to participate in an International Experts Roundtable in Rome on the topic of “Women’s financial inclusion and the role of remittances”. This roundtable marked the occasion of the United Nations International Day of Family Remittances ...

The promise of mobile money for further advancing women’s financial inclusion

The findings of this blog are based on Findex 2017 microdata released in October 2018. In this blog, we discuss the role of mobile money in driving financial inclusion, particularly for women. Mobile money has the potential to close the gender gap in account ownership Since ...

The Conectadas Project: an innovative approach to deliver the Mobile Internet Skills Training Toolkit, empower women in Guatemala and increase MNO’s data revenues

As part of the GSMA’s Connected Women Commitment Initiative, Tigo Guatemala committed to design strategies aiming to increase the proportion of women in their mobile internet customer base in Guatemala from 46% to 50% by 2020. To reach this goal, Tigo partnered with SHEVA, a ...

Enabling partnerships between mobile operators and utility service providers in Asia Pacific

On 25 September, the Mobile for Development (M4D) Utilities Programme hosted a Mobile Operator Roundtable alongside the GSMA Mobile 360 – Digital Societies event in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. With participation from ten mobile operators and 3 utility service providers, the key ...

Do no digital harm

‘Do no harm’ is a core humanitarian principle that is intended for the protection of beneficiaries of humanitarian assistance, and is considered the minimum standard to avoid causing inadvertent harm. This principle must accordingly be considered when looking at the ...

A Recap of M360 Digital Societies from Banglalink

The internet has become a commodity for many people round the world, yet millions of people still gain access to the internet for the first time every year, and there remains a “usage gap” of 3.2 billion people.

“Affordability”: How mobile operators can improve the affordability of their services for women to help close the mobile gender gap

This is one of a series of blogs that deep dives into our framework to help mobile operators close the gender gap in their customer base. This blog focuses on one of the five themes that we believe mobile operators should focus on to address the most common barriers ...

Inclusion, Innovation and Scale: The focus of our new GSMA-DFID partnership

At the recent Mobile 360 Africa in Kigali, we announced a new £38 million partnership between the GSMA and the UK’s Department for International Development (DFID). The ‘Partnership for Inclusion, Innovation and Scale’ will provide funding for the GSMA’s Mobile for ...

Meet our portfolio start-ups: AgroCenta, Ghana

Smallholder farmers in Ghana, while often poor and illiterate, face two main problems: lack of access to structured markets, which leaves them at the mercy of predatory brokers or middlemen who buy at exploitative prices, and lack of access to finance, which means they may ...

Rapid urbanisation, innovators to the rescue? Takeaways from Afric’Up

The GSMA Mobile for Development (M4D) Utilities team was excited to speak at the Afric’Up Tech and Start-Up summit on 24 and 25 September in Tunis, which focused on how innovative start-ups can address the challenges associated with rapid urbanisation across Africa. ...

Personal and technological connections coming together – Seedstars Apia

The third and final of three events, being held in the Pacific region by Seedstars, in partnership with the GSMA and supported by the Australian Government, began on 24 September in Apia, Samoa. As with the previous events, two days of start-up bootcamp was followed by a ...

The weather data gap: How can mobile technology make smallholder farmers climate resilient?

Monday 7 October, 2019 | AgriTech | Blog | Global

In the new GSMA AgriTech report, Mobile Technology for Climate Resilience: The role of mobile operators in bridging the data gap, we explore how mobile network operators (MNOs) can play a bigger role in developing and delivering services to strengthen the climate resilience ...

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