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Innovation is at the heart of Vodafone’s contribution to development. We strive to develop commercially sustainable products and services that are of high value to society and can be replicated across our markets.
In some cases we have established specialised business units responsible for our products and services in a particular area, while in others we have people working together across the business and with external partners to come up with new ideas.
The opportunities for mobile communications to contribute to development are vast, but we have identified several key areas on which we are focusing our efforts.
Vodafone M-Pesa
Banking facilities are often scarce in emerging markets, especially in rural areas. Many people without bank accounts find it difficult or expensive to transfer money through traditional banking services.
Vodafone M-Pesa provides access to banking and money transfer services via mobile. Customers can send money safely, affordably and faster than existing alternative methods. It is now available in six markets, and has become a core mobile service. In Kenya alone, the service has more than 13.5 million registered customers, while in Tanzania the volume of transactions completed is quadrupling each year.
We have a dedicated business unit that looks for new applications of Vodafone M-Pesa technology. Recent innovations include:
Read more about Vodafone M-Pesa.
Vodafone mHealth Solutions
Mobile technology offers significant opportunities to improve the accessibility, efficiency and effectiveness of health services – from reduced administration costs to text message systems to prevent missed appointments, remind patients to take medication or ask clinic staff to check medical supplies.
Our dedicated business unit collaborates with healthcare providers, health insurance companies, and the pharmaceutical and medical technology industries to investigate ways that mobile can improve the efficiency of healthcare systems and enable more people to access the treatments and care they need.
In developed markets our efforts have a dual focus. We are investigating the use of mobile in remote monitoring of patients’ conditions and treatment regimes, and in assisted living whereby elderly patients who would traditionally be moved to a care facility can stay living at home with the aid of technology. Both services relieve pressure on national health providers and improve patients’ quality of life.
In emerging markets, our goal is to improve access to basic healthcare. We are trialling new technologies and scaling up well-established projects, such as SMS for Life in Tanzania, which uses SMS to track and manage the supply of malaria drugs so patients do not have to go without.
Read more about Vodafone mHealth Solutions.
Agriculture
Agricultural production must increase by an estimated 70% by 2050 to feed a global population that is expected to have reached 9 billion1. Meeting this challenge will require a massive improvement in the efficiency of agricultural production – and distribution of food supplies.
We believe our technology can dramatically improve the efficiency of the agricultural value chain – increasing smallholder farmers’ income, minimising the costs for agribusiness and retailers, and maximising the proportion of food grown worldwide that ends up on consumers’ plates.
We offer special tariffs and services for farmers in several emerging markets. In Turkey, the Vodafone Farmer’s Club provides customers with weather alerts and local market price information.
We are looking for new ways to contribute, and have commissioned research into the sustainability issues facing the agriculture supply chain to help us identify how mobile can help to address these challenges.
The research concluded that mobile communication could help meet the challenge of feeding over 9 billion people by 2050 whilst delivering socio-economic and environmental benefits. The report also highlights 4 specific categories of solutions which could increase agricultural income by around US$138 billion across 26 of Vodafone markets in 2020:
The report aims to stimulate the necessary engagement between mobile operators, governments, NGOs and businesses to realise these opportunities and explore others.
Read the Connected Agriculture Report (PDF 2MB)
Community power
The UN Development Programme estimates that 1.6 billion people worldwide live without access to electricity, mostly in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. We are investigating opportunities to use our network infrastructure to bring affordable power supplies to people in remote and rural areas without access to the electricity grid. As we roll out more base stations powered by renewable energy (such as solar or wind), communities and the environment could benefit from better access to clean energy. By enabling community access to power in this way, we can help alleviate energy poverty – a key development issue – and promote lower-carbon societies.
mWomen
Over 300 million fewer women than men in emerging markets have a mobile phone. Research shows that they and their families can benefit greatly from better access to telecommunications. For example, 85% of women feel more independent because of their mobile phone, while 41% have increased income and professional opportunities2.
We are committed to the United Nations’ Women’s Empowerment Principles and are looking for ways to use mobile to empower women in emerging markets, while creating value for Vodafone. Women constitute the world’s largest consumer spend segment, and the gender gap in mobile phone ownership represents around $13 billion in unrealised revenues per year3.
We are also establishing our own development projects to support and empower women, including Project Siwa in Egypt, which teaches rural women to read and write at home via mobile. Another example is our Al Johara programme, which gives women in Qatar the chance to socialise, learn entrepreneurial skills and earn a living by selling Vodafone products and services to their friends, families and communities.
In India, we are participating in the Indian Department of Telecommunications’ Sanchar Shakti scheme, supporting women in self help groups by training them to become Vodafone retailers, providing finance management tools and offering information about health, hygiene and social issues via mobile. In Turkey, our focus is on raising awareness about the need to improve women’s access to mobile and gaining insights into how Vodafone can develop innovative solutions tailored for women.
Vodafone participates in the GSMA mWomen programme, a public-private partnership championed by Cherie Blair and Hilary Clinton that aims to bring 150 million more mobile connections to women in emerging markets over the next three years.
We also sponsored the mWomen programme’s ‘Bottom of the Pyramid Applications Challenge’, which aims to inspire application developers to come up with original and customised solutions targeted at the specific needs of women in developing countries. Winners received a US$10,000 prize to put towards creating and commercialising their application.
1 UN Food and Agriculture Organization, How to feed the world, 2009
2 GSMA Development Fund and Cherie Blair Foundation for Women, 2010, ‘Women and mobile: A global opportunity’
3 GSM Association, 2010
Find out more about how we manage sustainability and view comprehensive performance data.
Download our 2010/11 sustainability report [PDF] and view previous versions.
