AusAID awards a US$533,800 grant to GSMA mWomen Programme

The Australian Agency for International Development (AusAID) has awarded GSMA mWomen Programme a US$533,800 grant to help achieve the programme’s goals of closing the mobile phone gender gap and provide life-changing services to women in the developing world.

AusAID’s contribution will expand the geographic and technical reach of the GSMA mWomen research, “Base of the Pyramid (BOP) Women’s Wants and Needs”, which has also received substantial funding from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). AusAID’s partnership will enable the research to expand to representative locations in the Pacific Islands and allow for a deeper understanding of women’s wants and needs around health care, education, financial inclusion and income-generation. The goal of the research is to define the types of mobile products and services that are desired and can be sustainably delivered to BOP women via the mobile platform.

Additionally, the GSMA mWomen Programme is currently designing the detailed mWomen Business Case in collaboration with USAID; AusAID will extend this work by supporting the creation of a Marketing Toolkit, which will be designed to provide the mobile industry with best practices in behaviour change communications, particularly in countries where cultural barriers contribute greatly to the mobile phone gender gap. The AusAID grant will also be used to support the GSMA mWomen Programme’s commercial advocacy activities.

“This grant will make a significant contribution to our work aiming to enable women at the base of the pyramid to own a mobile phone and access life-changing value added services,’ said Trina DasGupta, Programme Director, GSMA mWomen. ‘We are excited to implement the extensions to our programme that this grant makes possible.’

Read more about the grant on AusAID’s website here.

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