Business centre
August 17, 2008
Trade-POD is a business centre that will serve the requirements of the local business community because it is totally flexible in how the facility can be used.
A social entrepreneur will be identified to take on the daily management of the facility. Business start ups will be helped to get going with advice and access to microfinance, if required.
Training of all types will be provided to enable businesses to expand or improve on the service or products they supply their customer base.
A ‘Business in a box’ mobile phone service will be provided. This is software to make a mobile phone a payphone so a service can be offered to people with a tariff of charges for using the service. The starter kit includes a charger, the necessary software and marketing leaflets to enable the service to be promoted proactively.
A Micro-finance service will be operated to enable micro and small business operators to access finance that helps them develop and in some cases, free themselves from the grips of loan sharks to be able to operate as they wish.
Social franchising business model
August 17, 2008
A franchise is a “business strategy” designed to maximise market share and minimise risk for its participants.
African Development Bank research states “franchising contributes to poverty reduction and wealth creation”.
Therefore franchising is a good model for enterprise as its an established business strategy that allows the person buying into it - the franchisee - to have a business that is tried and tested and able to trade from day one. There is the additional bonus of ongoing support from the owner of the franchise - the franchisor.
Now what if the opportunity existed for this type of business model to be rolled out across the countries of sub-saharan Africa rapidly but instead of the traditional franchisor and franchisee financial relationship a whole new arrangement was attempted.
This business model is called “social franchising”. This is where an NGO such as Geo-POD has a replicable, scaleable and workable model that it wants to rapidly expand in order to achieve the Millennium Development Goals by 2015.
Millennium Development Goals
August 17, 2008
In 2000, the nations of the world committed, for the first time, to ending extreme poverty. The Millennium Development Goals, agreed to by every country in the world, set time-bound and measurable targets for halving extreme poverty by 2015. In 2005, at the World Summit leaders from all 191 member states recommitted to achieving the Millennium Development Goals, while at the G8 Summit in Gleneagles developed country leaders agreed to double aid to Africa by 2010 and to eliminate debts for the poorest countries.
Sub-Saharan Africa is currently at the greatest risk of not achieving the Goals and is struggling to progress on almost
every dimension of poverty, including hunger, lack of education, and prevalent disease.
The eight MDGs are to halve extreme poverty and hunger, achieve universal primary education, promote gender equality and maternal health, reduce child mortality, combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases, ensure environmental sustainability, and develop a global partnership for development.
Cluster developments
August 17, 2008
Each village community and any larger cluster will be unique in both the people who live there and how they make a living from the natural environment. Any attempt to intervene in a positive way into this unique social structure must take into account their specific needs and reflect the local knowledge amongst its population.
This people will already know what needs to be done to help them make their situation better but its the resources and infrastruture that they invariably lack, not the desire.
Between 1990 and 2001, the number of people in sub-Saharan Africa living on less than $1 a day rose from 227 million to 313 million, and the poverty rate rose from 45 percent to 46 percent.
The unacceptable face of humanity
August 17, 2008
“Poverty humiliates and denigrates everything that a human being stands for.”
There are many ways for people to die, but somehow dying of starvation is the most unacceptable of all. It happens in slow motion. Second by second, the distance between life and death becomes smaller and smaller.
Poverty exists everywhere you look across the globe and many times exists unseen in our own, so called, developed world communities. But even here there exists the basics for survival - clean water, readily available food (they don’t have to wait for it to grow) and the chance to earn or receive financial support. It might not be exactly what they need but at least its something.
Women & Geo-POD
August 17, 2008
If the goals of economic development include:
- improved standards of living
- removal of poverty
- access to dignified employment
- reduction in inequlaity
then it is quite natural to start with women.
They constitute the majority of the poor, the under-employed and the economically and socially disadvantaged.
More than a clinic
August 17, 2008
A Medi-POD facility has many functions in addition to the provision of front line medical care.
An experienced and qualified medical worker will be recruited to manage the Medi-POD. They will know what services to organise and offer from day one of operation. They will coordinate the services with the hospital acting as the facilities partner.
The volunteers from the hospital partner, the university partner and from overseas will assist the medical worker to quickly establish a programme of services to benefit the local population that will be covered by the Medi-POD. This will include both prevention & intervention programmes.
A disease surveillance system will be established through the mobile phone network so monitoring can be coordinated through organisations with any existing programmes in place.
The Medi-POD will act as an access point for vaccination programmes coordinated by international NGOs and charities.
The medical worker will work closely with the Trade-POD and Edu-POD workers to distribute information on maternal health, child birth, contraception and safer sex.
The facility will provide an HIV/Aids awareness information and counselling services.
Act as a distribution point for Malaria treated bed nets that will manufactured locally or regionally, thus providing employment opportunities.
Act as a delivery point for visiting medical charities – eg cataracts operations
Clean water will be delivered by pipe to the facility from the Play pump water storage tank.
A Computer will be connected to the internet via the Trade-POD facility to access medical information available online and provide timely data to central collection points to assist in medical programmes that encompass the whole region or country.
Free hot school meal everyday
August 17, 2008
The 2005 “State of Food Insecurity in the World” report states that “hungry children start school later, if at all, drop out sooner and learn less while they do attend, stalling progress towards universal primary and secondary education”. (Millennium Development Goal No.s 2).
It will be a priority of every Edu-POD facility to provide a free hot meal to every child while at school. This will have an immediate effect on their health through the regular taking of healthy and nutrient rich hot food and aid them in their concentration while attending lessons.
This will allow the monitoring by the Medi-POD medical staff, of the children’s progress in terms of weight gain and overall well being. The teachers in the Edu-POD should see a steady improvement in concentration levels of the children during classes. This provision would go a great way towards dealing with the issue of hunger that plagues the Least Developed Countries and Sub-Saharan Africa in particular.
A potential side effect of this type of provision is that it will act as a way to attract children to attend school. Parents will see a double-benefit in that the children receive a free hot meal while at school but also bring home provisions that are locally produced
and given to the children’s families as part of the outreach programme.
This would help all members of the community in one go as the provisions would be available to all to utilise. It could form part of a community wide monitoring project by the Edu-POD and Medi-POD teams working together to tackle the issue of hunger.
GSMA Development Fund
August 14, 2008
Founded in October 2005, the GSMA Development Fund has rapidly established itself as a leader in identifying and implementing new uses for mobile communications to help people at the bottom of the social and economic pyramid. In short we connect the unconnected.
Our success is already proven. We have a created cost effective delivery mechanisms to enable speed and efficiencies. Thus in just 24 months we have delivered 16 pilot projects, with 12 mobile operators, in the following 11 countries
Algeria, Namibia, South Africa, Bangladesh, Nigeria, Tanzania, India, Pakistan, Uganda, Kenya and Rwanda
Our approach is based on six core principles:
To seed/catalyse programmes
We focus on practical field implementations that generate tangible results. We believe that connectivity means productivity, and that once this concept has been demonstrated, market forces will come into play and turn our pilot projects into new businesses.
To impact at scale and sustainably
We only work on projects that have the potential to be economically self-sustainable. In addition we are focused on building scalable solutions that impact sizable groups of people, as opposed to niche groups.
To work with operators in target markets
We leverage our unique position as the industry body for over 700 global operators and 200 vendors to bring innovative ICT solutions to new markets, sharing knowledge and world best practice.
To partner with other funding organisations
We build relationships with international, well-established funding organisations for the purpose of future funding, pilot execution and sharing of lessons learned.
To leverage government relationships
We believe that government policy and regulation play a crucial role in alleviating the digital divide, hence we engage governments in our projects where possible.
To apply commercial rigour and discipline to delivery, going beyond the established concept of Corporate Social Responsibility
We fund and directly manage the implementation of all our projects in the field through our own team and our strategic partner Accenture Development Partnerships.
Motorola Base Station
August 14, 2008
Motorola has been working with the GSM Association on a trial project in Namibia which was announced at 3GSM Barcelona in February 2007.
“A key challenge in much of Africa is connecting people in off-grid locations and this project seeks to highlight to operators that wind and solar power is a real and cost effective alternative. We expect this pilot to become a showcase for the industry and to see replication of the model thereafter,” said Dawn Hartley, Development Fund manager at the GSMA.
“With the implementation of cell sites into more remote areas this Motorola solution provides us with an efficient and reliable alternative to the often costly roll-out of mains grid electricity. This is an important project for us and commencement of the wind and solar cell site trial is proof of our commitment to our customers to provide the essential communication services needed in the region,” said Albertus Aochamub, corporate services general manager, MTC Namibia.
By incorporating renewable energy solutions into communication networks Motorola is trialling this solution as a feasible option for operators instead of utilising costly fuel generators or waiting long periods for a mains grid connection. The Dordabis cell site will remain a part of MTC Namibia’s live GSM network throughout the trial.