Why Mobile? 10+ years of learning how and where mobile technology contributes to development

For more than 10 years, the GSMA Innovation Fund has provided funding to innovators leveraging mobile and digital technology to reach underserved people in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs).

Why do we focus on mobile and digital technology?

When does putting a service on a mobile device, embedding an Internet of Things (IoT) sensor or developing a digital platform lead to improved livelihood, reduced barriers to essential or life-enhancing services or benefit the environment, and when is it a more expensive way to do something that could be done another way?

This paper answers that question by looking across the GSMA Innovation Fund portfolio rather than at any single grantee. The central finding is that mobile and digital technology rarely create better socio-economic outcomes on their own.

What digital technology does achieve is making services more deliverable, scalable and verifiable by lowering the cost of reaching people, improving the reliability of the services, ensuring inclusion and producing the evidence that funders, partners and regulators need to keep the business model alive.