Early blockchain projects are being used to improve people’s access to self-sovereign identities. FILE PHOTO | NMG
Kenya has developed a reputation as one of the most
technologically advanced nations in Africa over the past decade, with
established Internet infrastructure that has aided it to benefit from
mobile for
development, a position underpinned by its strong Internet penetration and adoption through its well-established set-up, disruptive innovations that’s closing digital divide — driving socio-economic growth into the future.
development, a position underpinned by its strong Internet penetration and adoption through its well-established set-up, disruptive innovations that’s closing digital divide — driving socio-economic growth into the future.
Latest Communications
Authority of Kenya (CA) data show that mobile penetration has hit 112
percent, with 53.2 million subscribers, a 13 percent year-on-year rise.
Telco giant Safaricom also slashed its price per megabyte by 42 per cent
in the year ended 2019, a stimulant for the growth.
At
13.7 megabits per second, Kenya’s average data connection speed is
almost twice the global average, second in Africa, and even beating the
United States’ speed of 10.7mbps. This has aided its rising popularity
of solutions-based innovations.
M-Pesa, Kenya’s
flagship mobile innovation, has also played a key role as a catalyst for
growth. The innovative apps have spurred financial inclusivity, boosted
health, education, humanitarian and energy-related services.
As
the Fourth Industrial Revolution unfolds, government has not been left
out as witnessed in its usage in mass registrations of persons through
Huduma and on e-citizen digital services and e-payments. Here are some
of the milestones over the past 10 years.
SUBSCRIPTIONS
Latest
GSM Association (GSMA) insights show that for the past 10 years of
mobile for development, 823 million people have been connected around
the world but lack mobile broadband coverage and 37 mobile operators
have made 52 commitments to reduce gender gap in their mobile money or
Internet customer base.
Further, 14 million smallholder farmers benefited from mobile
agricultural services while more than two million women and their
families accessed life-saving health and nutritional information via
their mobile phones
Mobile money digital transaction value grew at more than twice the rate of cash in, cash out values in 2018.
There
are currently 155 mobile operator signatories of the humanitarian
connectivity charter, operating in more than 108 countries, £33 million
(Sh4.4 billion) additional funding raised by ecosystem accelerator
start-ups through crowding-in.
There are 1.6
mobile-enabled pay-as-you-go solar home systems are now installed
globally, and the digital identity programme working with partners to
develop innovative identity solutions for the one billion people.
Globally,
the number of unique mobile subscribers reached the five billion mark
in 2018. Since early 2019, more than four billion people in emerging
markets, or 62 percent of the population, can benefit from the access to
mobile, according to GSMA.
Ten years ago, about a
third of the mobile subscribers had a mobile Internet subscription,
today it is more than two-thirds who are active mobile Internet users,
representing more than 2.6 billion people.
This revolution in mobile access worldwide has impacted social systems and shifted the way people communicate and access to information.
This revolution in mobile access worldwide has impacted social systems and shifted the way people communicate and access to information.
SUSTAINABLE GOALS
The
GSMA represents the interests of mobile operators worldwide, uniting
more than 750 operators with over 350 companies in the broader mobile
ecosystem, including handset and device makers, software companies,
equipment providers and internet companies, as well as organisations in
adjacent industry sectors.
It opened its regional
office in Nairobi in March 2018, and in sub-Sahara Africa, has presence
in Democratic Republic of Congo, Cote D’Ivoire, Nigeria, and Zambia.
While
celebrating 10 years of mobile for development, GSMA looked back to
reflect on the milestones and its contribution to all the 17 of the UN
Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Two-thirds of global population (5.1 billion) are mobile subscribers, half (3.5 billion) are using Internet services.
The
sector contributed $3.9 trillion (4.6 percent) to global GDP. Two
billion use their mobile phone to purchase goods and services while 1.3
billion access health services and 1.4 billion use mobile to improve
their education or that of their children. Additional 140 million people
in rural areas connected to the mobile Internet for the first time.
DIGITAL INCLUSION
Mobile ownership and Internet adoption remain far from universal — away from rural, illiterate, and disabled persons.
Across
lower-middle-income countries, 15 percent of adults still don’t own a
mobile phone and 45 percent will still be off by 2025, according to
GSMA. There is still coverage of 750 million people globally who live in
areas not covered by mobile broadband networks and 3.3 billion people
who are covered but might not be using Internet services, revealing a
glaring usage gap.
One way to resolve the barrier,
according to GSMA, is through mobile Internet skills training toolkit,
designed to introduce customers to mobile internet and equip them with
necessary skills to use popular applications.
Estimates
indicate that more than 75 percent of refugees and displaced people are
women, children, elderly and persons with disabilities.
Kim
Viljoen, GSMA insights manager, says digital inclusion can only be
achieved if most underserved population are placed at the centre of
product and service ideation, design and development.
MOBILE MONEY
“In
the early days of mobile money, there was a lot of uncertainty and not
many success stories. Fast forward to its second decade, the mobile
money industry continues to reach new heights,” says GSMA.
“Today,
many industry players have scaled, growth in transactions and accounts
is steady, mobile money has become the absolute essential innovation,
intersecting with almost every other development topic and it is
enabling a breadth of partnerships in humanitarian, in agriculture, in
energy, among others, many of which were not imagined in the early days
of mobile money.”
With
866 million registered accounts and live services across 90 markets,
the mobile money industry is offering a financial future to millions of
customers around the world.
The third Global Findex
shows transformative progress in financial inclusion around the world,
with 515 million more adults reporting account ownership in 2017 than in
2014. The mobile money industry has played a pivotal role in this
journey.
The majority of these countries are in
sub-Saharan Africa, where mobile money is the leading force for
financial inclusion with 21 percent of adults having a mobile money
account — nearly twice the share in 2014.
More than
one billion people remain off-grid, but in less than five years, the
solar pay-as-you-go model has improved the quality of life of some eight
million people, primarily in sub-Saharan Africa.
PARTNERSHIPS
To
date, there are four billion unique mobile subscribers, 2.7 billion
mobile Internet users and 299 million active mobile money users in
emerging markets.
Nevertheless, mobile operators face a
plethora of challenges, including sustainable competitive advantage in
the telecoms sector, which is increasingly becoming difficult to
achieve. Digital disruption has made it difficult for telcos to keep up
with the pace of innovation.
According
to VC firm Partech, in 2018, out of 54 African countries, only 146 tech
start-ups raised a total of just $1 billion (Sh100 billion) in equity
funding.
Today, in emerging markets, more than anywhere
else, there are opportunities for operators and start-up to
collaborate. Mobile operators have reached the scale that start-ups
lack, while start-ups have the local innovation mobile operators need.
Donors
have played a vital role in supporting emerging digital ecosystems in
developing markets, providing risk capital for ideas that companies may
not have had resources to pursue.
For instance, DFID’s
early investment in Safaricom’s M-Pesa, which enabled the service
development team the freedom to experiment.
This helped
grow the seed of an idea, which first aimed at allowing microfinance
institution customers to repay small business loans, to the flourishing
financial service that by 2016 had lifted 194,000 or two percent of
households in Kenya above the poverty line as well as being forecast to
generate 50 percent of Safaricom’s revenues between 2019-2022.
FRONTIER TECH
By
implementing new digital technologies such as blockchain, artificial
intelligence (AI) and Big Data, organisations are finding new ways to
strengthen the efficiency of their programmes, make better-informed
decisions, and reach more people with fewer resources.
Early
blockchain projects are being used to improve people’s access to
self-sovereign identities, bring new levels of transparency to the
distribution of international aid, and improve the efficiency of cash
transfers.
Early
evidence shows that these projects could provide mobile network
operators new opportunities to create new revenue streams, cut
know-your-customer compliance costs, and related barriers as well as
contribute to the SDGs.
Africa’s phone shipments fell
1.9 percent year-on-year in 2018, basic and feature phones accounted for
59 percent of all shipments (215.3 million units), compared to 41
percent for smartphones, a potential frontier for growth.
CONVERGENCE
The
social impact of digital is profound: for individuals, mobile phone
ownership supplemented with Internet access is associated with an
improvement in how people evaluate their own lives, as evidenced by
Gallup’s analysis showing increases in both average life evaluations and
net positive emotions.
At the macroeconomic level,
it’s now beyond questioned the economies of the future will be digital.
World Economic Forum and Accenture analysis estimate the combined value
of digital transformation to industry and society at $100 trillion over
the next decade.
Over the last decade, convergence
between models is becoming prevalent, from messaging platforms such as
WeChat getting into payments space to ride-hailing apps such as Grab
venturing into logistics and food deliveries.
A
similar trend is also observed in the mobile for development space,
where mobile money providers are shifting towards ‘payments as a
platform’ model, connecting consumers with third-party services.
DIGITAL INCLUSION
Recent
technological advancements can have a positive impact on the barriers
that lead to digital, financial and social exclusion.
However,
all initiatives using new technologies should be deployed in a manner
that respects an individual’s privacy and incorporates principles of
‘privacy by design’. Due to low levels of digital literacy, many
low-income consumers do not see the importance of keeping their personal
information or mobile devices, secure and private.
In terms of exclusion, few are more excluded than people with disabilities (PWDs).
Today,
about one billion have some forms of disability, with up to 190 million
facing severe impairments, making it hard to navigate society and
much-needed services.
Research shows that in many
countries, a disability and development gap is growing: unless people
with disabilities are routinely included in development efforts, their
socio-economic status often remains static while the status of their
non-disabled peers surges ahead.
Another striking
statistic is that only 10 percent of PWDs have access to the assistive
technology they require to live more autonomous lives.
The
gender gap in mobile phone ownership remains static at 10 percent and
increases to 23 percent for mobile Internet use and 33 percent for using
mobile money.
“As mobile technology continues to be a
critical enabler of economic growth, if women are digitally excluded
then they will be increasingly economically and socially excluded as
well,” the report says.
E-CITIZENS
As
citizens move from paper-based to digital forms of identification,
mobile operators will find new opportunities to unlock access to a wide
range of critical services, including those offered by public
institutions.
The digitisation of agricultural value
chains is a key emerging area and offers growth opportunities for mobile
operators. In developing countries, agriculture contributes between 10
percent and 35 percent of gross domestic product. Smallholder farmers
and agribusinesses, however, face many inefficiencies within
agricultural value chains.
The mobile industry has an
opportunity to address these challenges. Mobile operators can partner
with AgriTech innovators to develop digital tools to boost productivity.
CLIMATE CHANGE
Beyond
the dissemination of information via mobile phones, technology is
crucial to bridge the data gap in weather monitoring and forecasting.
For
instance, microwave data from backhaul networks and mobile-based
geolocation data – GPS, cell ID, can be combined with Big Data from
satellites and sensors to create flood warnings or hyper-localised
forecasts for communities that are vulnerable to climate change.
Further,
services such as digital weather and crop insurance are replacing the
traditional insurance model. GMSA study with CGAP revealed that digital
payments increased water service provider revenues by 15 to 37 percent
while decreasing collection costs by 57 to 95 percent.
UN
Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs estimated that in
2019, there will be 150 million people in need of aid, and in 2018 this
came at a cost of $22.5 billion.
A digital connected
system, accessible and sustainable mobile-enabled services can play a
central role in supporting people affected by crises — with about 93
percent of refugees covered by 2G and 3G networks, offering
opportunities for digital humanitarian response.
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