GSMA mHealth is very pleased to announce the commencement of an important new business and science partnership with the UK Government, through the Department for International Development (DFID).
This partnership will catalyse a collaborative process between public and private sector in the health and mobile industries, focusing directly on mNutrition and maternal/child health in 10 African countries over a period of 3 years.
mNutrition
There is growing interest internationally in ensuring that agricultural programmes and policies have nutrition as an explicit objective and that they are able to measure and track impacts on nutrition and health outcomes. At the 2012 G8 Summit, senior global leaders met to discuss new G8 efforts on food security and the opportunity and benefits of private sector investment in African agriculture and food sectors.
The launch of the mNutrition initiative is in direct response to the following extreme indicators:
- Undernourished estimates in Sub-Saharan Africa have grown from 175m to 239m in the last 20 years, with 20m added in the last 2 years
- 36% of children in Africa under 5 are born with stunted growth
- In May 2012, health leaders adopted the Maternal, Infant and Young Nutrition plan to reduce the number of stunted children in the world by 40% by 2025
The GSMA mNutrition Initiative will deliver a range of mobile services covering areas of nutrition, agriculture and healthcare and entail the launch of behaviour change communication services, agricultural extension services, population-level registration and data tracking.
Countries
GSMA mHealth has developed a 20-month country plan, which will be replicated across 10 countries. Each country plan encompasses three major streams of activity
- Development of a scalable and sustainable business case amongst a consortia of public and private stakeholders in each country
- Support the implementation of mNutrition services in each country
- Catalyse replication of mNutrition services by documenting and sharing of best practice resources and tools
Nigeria and Malawi are deemed priority countries and programme work started in both in September 2013.
Implementation is planned to start in Ghana in September 2014 and thereafter in the remaining countries –
- Côte d’Ivoire
- Kenya
- Mozambique
- Rwanda
- Tanzania
- Uganda
- Zambia
For further information, I would encourage you to view current mHealth implementations in the above countries on the mHealth Tracker.
GSMA Resources
The launch of the mNutrition initiative has been supported by an important increase in scale, resources and capabilities in the mHealth team, based in London and Nairobi.
Photo: Children in Uganda eat a meal. © 2008 Otushabire Tibyangye, Courtesy of Photoshare.