Vodafone's contribution

About Vodafone

Vodafone's contribution to the MDGs

As a telecommunications company with a strong presence in emerging markets, Vodafone is well placed to play a part in the global effort to alleviate poverty.

We believe that our networks and innovative products and services can make a significant difference to people's lives around the world. Simply by operating in emerging markets, we are making a contribution – by, for example, providing local people with employment and procurement opportunities. But we can make a much bigger contribution through our products and services.

Our commitment to playing a role in global development is embedded throughout the business: we have set a strategic objective to be recognised as a communications company making one of the most significant contributions to achieving the United Nations' Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by March 2015.

Vodafone and the MDGs
World leaders developed and adopted the UN MDGs in 2000, with the aim of forming a global partnership to tackle extreme poverty. The eight Goals are a series of targets to be met by 2015 and have been agreed by all of the world’s countries and leading development organisations.

The table provides examples of opportunities for Vodafone to contribute to the MDGs. Use the interactive map to explore case studies on our how our products, services and initiatives are contributing by goal and by country.

Goals	Opportunities for Vodafone to contribute
1. Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger	Research shows that mobile telecommunications increase productivity and raise GDP. Our Vodafone Money Transfer services (in Afghanistan, Fiji, Kenya, Qatar, South Africa and Tanzania) also provide access to basic financial services, supporting economic development.
2. Achieve universal primary education	Our products and services can help students and adults access educational services. In India, we offer a service that teaches people how to speak English via mobile. Although this is not specifically focused on primary education, it contributes to development by helping people get better jobs.
3. Promote gender equality and empower women	The ICT industry can empower women through better access to digital services that were previously unattainable, particularly in patriarchal societies. Our Al Johara project gives Qatari women the opportunity to socialise, learn entrepreneurial skills and earn a living by selling Vodafone products and services to their friends, families and communities. We are also developing services that help women in India boost their livelihoods and learn via mobile.
4. Reduce child mortality	Mobile can significantly improve the efficiency of healthcare, particularly in remote areas. In Romania, we use mobile technology to help the country's only specialist neonatal ambulance to treat patients quicker and more effectively. By helping community caregivers work more efficiently in South Africa, our mobile health enablement platform, known as Nompilo, is improving access to healthcare and supporting treatment of children.
5. Improve maternal health	Mobile can significantly improve the efficiency of healthcare, particularly in remote areas. People in Kenya can use Vodafone Money Transfer to save up for better maternity care. In Tanzania, the Community Based Rehabilitation Hospital uses the service to transfer money for vulnerable women to receive corrective surgery for obstetric fistula after birth. The Vodafone Foundation has also donated £50,000 to the hospital for this type of surgery.
6. Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases	Training and awareness-raising, coupled with innovative distribution and administration services, can play a role in addressing the world’s most pressing health problems. Our Mobile Relationship Manager service, piloted in the SMS for Life project helps clinics in sub-Saharan Africa better manage supplies of malaria drugs.
7. Ensure environmental sustainability	The ICT industry's capacity to reduce others' carbon emissions is now widely acknowledged. Read about Vodafone's contribution to a low carbon economy. We are also investigating the potential to use our network infrastructure to provide affordable, renewable power to rural communities beyond the reach of energy grids, which would help to alleviate energy poverty – a key development issue – and promote lower-carbon societies (see innovation for development).
8. Develop a global partnership for development	Mobile network operators can help bridge the digital divide through the provision of ICT equipment and infrastructure to marginalised people. Vodafone WebBox, for example, brings the big screen internet experience to people in South Africa at low cost.

Our contribution is especially important in emerging markets that are not on track to meet the MDGs. Read more about the progress of each country on the UN website.

A sustainable contribution
We make our contribution sustainable by focusing on areas that not only support development, but also open up significant commercial opportunities. Offering innovative applications that meet the needs of people in emerging markets helps us attract and retain customers, and generate revenue.

This means we can make significant investment into these new products and services, and ensures the viability of Vodafone's business and the sustainability of our contribution to development in the long term.

We also contribute to development in a philanthropic way, through the activities of the Vodafone Foundation.

Collaboration is key
Alleviating poverty requires collaboration between governments, international development institutions, NGOs and other business sectors.

As a communications company, we believe we have an important role in multi-stakeholder partnerships, as our technology enables others to deliver services. We work with our corporate customers, governments or NGOs to develop innovative solutions.

For example, Vodafone products and services can help governments mobilise limited resources more efficiently – a key action recommended by the UN Development Programme (UNDP) report 'What will it take to achieve the Millennium Development Goals?'. By improving the efficiency of public services and reducing administration costs, we can help governments increase the impact of their development activities and reallocate surplus resources to additional projects.