Overview
The Development Fund leverages the industry expertise of the GSMA and its members, as well as the development expertise of international agencies and non-profit organisations to accelerate mobile services in three areas: Connectivity, Energy, and mServices.
Together with our partners we incubate and replicate new mobile services in communities where they can make a positive difference.
Our role and objectives
We believe that doing good is good business. With more than three billion users, ‘base of the pyramid’ markets are the future for mobile growth and innovation. The mobile industry is therefore uniquely positioned to deliver economic and social value to these markets.
In order to drive developments in this area the Development Fund’s role is to catalyse innovation, drive market scaling and increase knowledge networking to achieve the following objectives:
- Increase the number of effective, scalable and replicable development initiatives using mobile technology in emerging markets.
- Implement these initiatives in a scalable and sustainable fashion, bringing socio-economic benefits to individuals and communities.
- Increase awareness among governments and the development community of how GSM technology acts as an agent of development and can be used to bridge the digital divide.
Positively impacting the lives of thousands of people
Since its launch in 2006, the GSMA Development Fund and its partners have delivered a wide selection of scalable and sustainable projects across many developing countries, bringing the benefits of mobile communications to thousands of people.
To date we have delivered 26 projects in 14 countries with 21 operators, impacting over 150,000 people directly and an estimated 1 million indirectly.
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