Photo courtesy of mWater, a water and sanitation mobile M&E platform used by some of our grantees. mWater will present at our IWA session and is hosting a session at World Water Week called “Collaborative water monitoring through open data and mobile technology” on Wednesday 26th August at 11 AM.
The opportunities for mobile-enabled water and sanitation service models are more nascent than those in the energy space – something we’ve known from the start, but understood in more detail following our first round of the Innovation Fund. The barriers to these models include the fact that business models are less developed in the water and sanitation space compared to energy services, for which people are accustomed to paying. Governments and NGOs have traditionally been the providers of water and sanitation services. These stakeholders are crucial partners for scale, but institutional change can be slow, and funding uncertain. For example, although mobile offers a key opportunity to monitor services, designing a monitoring platform that is easily integrated and updated by government and sustainably financed has repeatedly proven to be a challenge.
All the more reason for M4D Utilities to spend more time with these stakeholders to discuss the potential benefits of using mobile to improve services, the barriers and solutions, and share best practices. We’re diving in deep at sessions during two upcoming water and sanitation conferences and hope you will join us. Below you’ll find a sneak peak about these events and links for learning more.
Upcoming M4D Utilities Sessions at Water and Sanitation Events:
Please let us know if you will be at one of these events so we can be sure to connect! M4DUtilities@gsma.com
“Mobile Financial Services for Rural Water in Africa”
Stockholm World Water Week: August 24-28
As 2015 marks the transition from the Millennium to the Sustainable Development Goals, the thematic scope of this year’s edition of World Water Week will be “Water for Development”. Although considerable progress has been made, the targets to achieve improved access to key basic services will not be reached: more than 650 million people still lack access to safe water and 2.3 billion don’t have access to adequate sanitation. The conference will bring into focus how institutions can go beyond the discussions about global goals and targets to address the actual implementation of the new Post-2015 development agenda in the local context.
The GSMA Mobile for Development Utilities team will be part of a session on “Sustainable Finance for Universal Rural Water Services,” led by the University of Oxford and held on Tuesday 25th of August. At the end of 2014, there were more than 100 million active mobile money subscribers worldwide (and growing), increasingly disrupting financial landscapes in emerging markets and enabling an unbanked category of the population to perform basic financial transactions. Despite the potential size and loyalty of the rural market, evidence suggests most mobile money deployments are facing challenges to extend their footprint beyond urban centres, due to lower population densities, low literacy levels or poor access to basic infrastructure. Drawing on the learnings of the off-grid energy sector increasingly leveraging mobile money, we’ll present some insights on how mobile financial inclusion can support access to decentralised utility services and solve some of the rural water financial and operational challenges. Other represented organisations are Grundfos Lifelink, UNICEF and Water and Sanitation Corporation from Rwanda.
“Leveraging Mobile Technology to Improve Utility Services for the Underserved”
International Water Association, Water and Development Congress & Exhibition: October 18-22.
This session will share leading examples of mobile innovations that have improved water or sanitation services or enabled new service delivery models. Panel discussions will dig more deeply into the barriers encountered and the benefits to service providers and customers. Participants will gain new ideas for how they can leverage mobile to improve services or unlock new models while learning how others have overcome barriers to these innovations and measured impact. Speakers will include:
• Mr Stephen Mbugua: Nairobi Water and Sewerage Company, Commercial Director
• Dr Aaron Krolikowski: Oxford University, Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship
• Dr Annie Feighery: mWater, Co-Founder and CTO
• Mr Dan Kamiri: Wonderkid, Co-founder and CEO
• Dr Mbaye Mbeguere: Office National de l’Assainissement du Sénégal, Programme Coordinator
Part 2 of this session will be a workshop on “Technology and Social Media to Engage Water Users” organised by the IWA Public and Customer Communications Specialist Group. Facilitated by experts, this session will use small group discussions to allow participants to share experiences, including best practices, model programmes, infrastructure limitations and performance metrics.