AudiencScapes

By Joseph Were

2 April 2010

Kampala, Uganda - Mobile phones, introduced in Uganda about 15 years ago, are becoming a key driver of development solutions in a range of areas-from health care to personal financial management to emergency service access.

Such applications are poised to expand briskly as Uganda's telecommunications infrastructure gets a boost from new fiber-optic cables connecting eastern Africa to the global internet grid. These are bringing faster and more reliable web and data connections for mobile as well as landline internet users, opening up a range of potential new uses for development-some of which are being offered by mobile operators directly.

Mobile in the development sector

In the nonprofit sector, a recent attempt to capitalize on improved connectivity was launched in December 2009 in the eastern Ugandan district of Jinja by Health Child, which focuses on creating safe and healthy environments for children and care givers. Teaming up with Text to Change (TTC), Health Child is running an SMS service to push information on family planning, HIV/AIDS awareness and maternal health, and to collect personal health data that will be used by the Ministry of Health's National Health Information Management System. The project targets poor fishing communities where most people do not own a mobile phone but are likely to have access to one. Health Child and TTC are also working on extending their project to other parts of the country.

A number of mobile financial applications in Uganda were highlighted in a recent paper by Richard Duncombe of the Institute for Development Policy and Management at the University of Manchester. In one case, a small dairy cattle and banana farmer found multiple beneficial uses for mobile phones, even though he found them to be something of an extravagance to own. He is able to transfer "money" in the form of mobile airtime via MTN's Me2U service once a month to his wife and brothers who live away from the farm. It also comes in handy in urgent situations: when a goat was gored by another goat, a veterinarian was summoned quickly by phone to treat the wound.

Duncombe also described an urgent response solution used by horticulturists and smallholder farmers in Kibuga Parish of Rubaya, a mountainous environment which is frequented by heavy rains and floods, soil erosion, and drought. A community mobile phone, kept at the "village information center", has a list of emergency contact numbers to call when catastrophe strikes.

Services offered by mobile operators

Mobile operators are introducing a range of services to cater to practical uses by Ugandan consumers. For example, MTN's recently launched MTN Google Information Search enables users to send an SMS query on a business, farming, health, education, or other topic and receive a near- instant reply, MTN Chief Marketing Officer Isaac Nsereko, quoted in The Independent magazine, said the service is attracting subscribers in droves. Other services include “Farmer’s Friend”, a searchable database with both agricultural advice and targeted weather forecasts. Health tips are paired with “Clinic Finder”, which helps users locate nearby health clinics and find out what services they offer. There are a variety of money or airtime transfer services, such as MTN's Me2U product mentioned previously (MTN's Web2U does the same via the internet).

According to the Uganda National Bureau of Statistics, there are 8.7 million mobile phone subscribers out of a total population of 33 million. However, the numbers do not tell the whole story; most mobile phones are shared among family, friends or neighbors, while many people use public access points such as MTN’s villagePhone Operators (VPOs), Zain’s All4One or Simu4U offered by UTL.

The VPOs, modeled after the Grameen Village phone program in Bangladesh, are public pay phones operated by small time entrepreneurs in remote regions (usually without electricity) and where the service can only be accessed with booster antennae. Up to 5000 VPOs are expected to be set up over time, with each expected to serve as many as 2000 people-mainly farmers, village business people, and local professionals.

The entrepreneur pays for the equipment, which includes the antennae, a car battery or solar power panel, a handset, a VPO user manual and a fixed dedicated SIM card that can be loaded with prepaid airtime. The entrepreneur recoups their investment by charging users for call time. All4One is a similar mobile phone-based service that is less focused on rural areas and more business driven. Simu4U is also a payphone network. operating out of kiosks in urban and rural areas.