Partnering during crisis: How MNOs can work with humanitarians to deliver impactful services for affected populations

Increasingly, mobile technology is being used to facilitate more dignified and self-reliant approaches to the provision of aid and services to people affected by crises. Its ubiquity and scale has made it an attractive delivery channel for many types of assistance.

As the scale of digital humanitarian assistance increases, aid agencies and private sector organisations are increasingly recognising the potential to offer essential products and services in partnership. To date, however, there has been limited published evidence that demonstrates the value of such partnerships for mobile network operators (MNOs) or documents the strengths that can be leveraged to deliver meaningful assistance to people in crisis.

This report highlights what these values are, with information gathered from working with multiple MNOs operating in the humanitarian space over a number of years, and by profiling the work of four MNOs that have experience supporting the delivery of aid in unique crisis contexts in three continents.

Download the report

When successfully combined, the unique core competencies and expertise of MNOs and humanitarian organisations can improve the coordination, effectiveness and outcomes of joint response and recovery efforts. These complementary strengths can also foster successful partnerships in a variety of areas, from user understanding through to maximising reach and scale of programming. However for any partnership to succeed in the long term, there must be a clearly articulated value proposition for MNOs.

Learning from the experience of Jawwal/PalTel Group (Palestine), JazzCash (Pakistan), Vodacom (Mozambique), and ZainCash (Iraq), readers can identify important ways in which mobile network operators can support the delivery of impactful services and strengthen understanding of how partnerships with humanitarians can be designed for success.


We have published four blogs, digging into these four case studies presented in the report: Zain Cash Iraq, Vodacom Mozambique, Jawwal/Paltel Group Palestine and JazzCash Pakistan. We have also released each case study as well as a summary of the broader report content in each local language (Arabic for Iraq and Palestine, Mozambique in Portuguese, and Urdu for Pakistan).

Download the case studies


This initiative is currently funded by the UK Department for International Development (DFID), and supported by the GSMA and its members.
Donor logos

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.