This blog is the foreword, written by Mats Granryd, our Director General, from the latest edition of our GSMA Mobile for Development (M4D) Utilities Annual Report, covering sector trends, the work of the M4D Utilities Innovation Fund grantees and that of the programme, since it began.
In emerging markets, close to one billion people live without electricity, 2.1 billion people lack access to safely managed water and 2.5 billion people do not have access to basic sanitation services. The M4D Utilities programme has been working to leverage the power of the mobile industry to help bridge these gaps and achieve Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 6 and 7 for water, sanitation and energy for all. With the support of the UK Department for International Development (DFID) and the Scaling Off-Grid Energy Grand Challenge for Development (SOGE), the programme has been supporting partnerships between mobile operators and on- and off-grid utility service providers to unlock innovative new business models to deliver energy, water and sanitation to all.
Since 2013, the GSMA M4D Utilities Innovation Fund has supported 50 organisations with a total of £9.4 million in grant funding, benefitting over 2.7 million people directly through the grant activities and a further 27.5 million through the growth of these organisations. Collectively, these organisations have raised more than £223 million in follow-on funding after receiving support from the Fund. The most recent round of grants awarded in 2017 and 2018 were selected from our most competitive round to date with a total of 488 applications, demonstrating a growing appetite among mobile operators and partners to launch mobile-enabled utilities services.
The M4D Utilities programme has catalysed some of the most promising innovations for improving access to essential life services. Starting in 2013, the programme funded some of the first pay-as-you-go (PAYG) solar home system (SHS) companies — M-KOPA, Fenix, Mobisol and PEG — pioneers in what is now a fast-growing industry delivering energy to the underserved. Learnings from this experience have now been transferred to new verticals, such as water, irrigation, clean cooking gas and sanitation. We are thrilled to see many of these new business models gaining traction, particularly in the water sector. In 2018, the M4D Utilities programme funded start-up CityTaps, which raised $1.1 million from the GIF to scale its smart prepaid water metering solution in Niger, and received an order for 10,000 meters from the national water utility.
In this year’s Annual Report, we are proud to present these trends through a complete review of the portfolio of organisations the programme has supported through its Innovation Fund. We are excited to see evidence that the mobile industry is recognising the primed business opportunity in the utility sector, and that this is leading to more mature and effective partnerships between mobile operators and service providers across the three sectors. Yet, globally, we still face profound challenges – urbanisation, climate change and economic inequality in particular – that disproportionately affect the poor who lack energy, water and sanitation services. By seeding the next generation of solutions, and supporting proven business models to scale, we believe the M4D Utilities programme will keep helping the mobile industry address these challenges.