Which countries are eligible for Innovation Fund grants?

Projects in the following regions are eligible:

• Sub-Saharan Africa
• North Africa and Middle East
• South and Southeast Asia
• The Pacific region (Please note that a separate round of applications for both NGOs and mobile operators in the Pacific region is under consideration for the second half of 2013.  Please contact us at mWomengrants@gsma.com if you would like further information).

Which countries are included in South Asia?

Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka.

Are government bodies eligible?

No, these grants are for Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) and social enterprises.

Are for-profit social enterprises eligible?

Yes, as long as the organisation has a demonstrated strong focus on delivering social impact.  The organisation must also:

• Be legally registered to operate in country of the proposed project, compliant with the relevant registration rules
• Have been in operation for a minimum of 2 years
• Operate at large scale, i.e. regional, national or global
• Be in satisfactory financial health, i.e. able to produce two years of unqualified, audited financial statements.

What is the page limit for the concept note?

The Fund Manager will not consider concept notes which are longer than four (4) pages, including the cover sheet. 

When will we know if our concept note has made it through to the next stage?

The concept notes are due on the 12^th June.  All applicants will be notified by the 21^st June.

We do not have two years of audited financial statements – can we apply?

No, sorry – organisations need to produce two years of audited financial statements to be eligible for Innovation Fund grants. 

By when do we have to have a mobile operator partner?

The concept note should, at the minimum, contain a clear plan and strategy for the mobile operator partnership, outlining who the key operator target(s) are.  By application stage, the operator partnership must be in place and formalised in a memorandum of understanding (MoU). This MoU can be contingent upon being awarded the grant.

Where can I find the concept note template?

All the documentation can be found on our website: http://www.gsma.com/mobilefordevelopment/gsma-mwomen-innovation-fund-grant-documentation-ngos-april-2013. 

Who should I contact for more information?

Please write to us at mWomengrants@gsma.com.

The very first Tech Salon to take place in London on Wednesday 20 March occurred just three days after the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) announced that connecting women to ICTs would become a focal point of the post-2015 development agenda. Led by discussants Chris Locke, Managing Director of Mobile for Development, GSMA, which houses the GSMA mWomen Programme, and Henriette Kolb, CEO of the Cherie Blair Foundation for Women, the well-timed Tech Salon topic was “Empowering Women and Girls with Mobiles,” and sought to ask questions about the potential and the pitfalls of using mobile as a tool for these purposes.

The discussion began with the revelation that Iraqi mobile network operator Asiacell, supported by the GSMA mWomen Programme, had conducted research to understand women’s mobile needs in its market, and through developing a mobile offering serving those needs, had connected 1.8 million women gain access to mobile services in less than two years. Many of the attendees marvelled at the figure, and the discussion then turned to questions of “Why?” mobile products and services that target women are even needed and “How?” to help more women gain access to mobile services.

Mobile phones, like all technologies, are not gender neutral

It was shared that some mobile network operators, like a few of the people present at the Salon, do not understand how use of and access to mobiles phones by women is different from men:

“Why are women different? What apart from affordability is different between men and women in using mobile phones? What makes it a gender service? Does it mean the phone is pink?”

In response to these questions, anecdotes were shared about how the lack of women pictured using mobile phones in marketing material can inadvertently send the message that mobile phones were not for them, which can widen the gender digital divide. Also, particularly in countries where cultural norms mean it’s considered inappropriate for women to interact with men outside the family such as Iraq and Afghanistan, the lack of female phone agents for women to interact with can be yet another barrier to overcome. While not all were enthusiastic about stereotypical use of colours to denote services for women, the successes that Oxfam’s Pink Phone Project have had were offered to illustrate that in some cases, thinking “pink” may help deter men from taking phones away from women to use for themselves.

If uptake by women is the goal, understanding the users’ needs and contexts is key – and complex

Once it was conveyed that mobiles are not gender neutral, attention then turned to how best to approach the development of mobile-based products and services for women. Given that no one woman is the same, and because women have diverse needs and contexts in which their mobile access and use will occur, many felt that this was no easy task:

“We tried to implement an IVR system but the people thought that it was a ghost.” “We are often asked what works. We really struggle with the evidence side of things.” “How do you judge the impact of text messages and access as it relates to women?”

Ladies in waiting?

Furthermore, it was acknowledged that civil society’s speed of innovation in the creation of mobile-based products and services for women has remained slow in comparison to the pace with which mobile moves:

“I think the NGO world needs to change its practice to keep up with the mobile industry’s decision making.” “When is a product good enough to benefit women? What happens in year 4 or 5 of a donor cycle?”

Concluding thoughts

The Tech Salon ended with more questions raised than answers provided. Nevertheless, one point was made that seemed to bring the morning’s discussions full circle by understanding that gender and mobile matters extend beyond counting the number of women and girls who have access:

“Changing perceptions of males in communities must be done in any gender-focused project. Empowerment of women alone not enough.”

Tigo Tanzania, which also has received grant funding from GSMA mAgri’s mFarmer programme, aims to identify products and services that will enable them to better serve resource-poor women throughout Tanzania. The grant-funded project began with consumer insights research on rural women undertaken by a cultural anthropologist funded in part by the grant. Next, Tigo will use these insights to design products and services to meet these women’s needs.

Tigo Tanzania has committed to sharing lessons from this project across Millicom to inform its approach to serving women in other markets, as well as with other members of the mWomen ecosystem interested in serving women.

The GSMA mWomen Innovation Fund’s objectives are threefold:

• To accelerate efforts by committed operators and NGOs to recognize and realize the commercial and social value of serving resource-poor women,
• To foster success by equipping and supporting them as they design,
• To launch offerings for women and to encourage further investment by sharing lessons and documenting demonstration models of success.

The next set of operator grantees are due to be announced in July. Meanwhile, stay tuned for the late April announcement about the launch of Innovation Fund grants for non-governmental organizations (NGOs). A fourth round for both operators and NGOs is targeted for launch in early September, 2013.

I am passionate about user experience design and product innovation. The research findings indicated a serious mobile phone gender gap which needed to be addressed. I wanted to make a positive impact on the lives and needs of resource-poor women through ‘design for development’ and to also share insights gained while working with teams on technological solutions for growth economies, e.g. Myshop and Merry Go Round, which enhances interactions of informal self-help groups through mobile solutions.

Explain why your design is suitable for resource-poor women.

The design addresses the literacy limitations of resource-poor women using real-life metaphors as simplified icons which users can easily relate to, with no requirement for behavioural change on the part of the user. While the concept permeates cultural boundaries, it increases the rate of adoption, confidence and trust to interact with the features and functions as facilitated by the design.

The provision of the SIM card icon on the homescreen is deemed vital in developing markets. There is frequent usage of this feature to access mobile money, purchase of airtime, etc. As such, the design ensures that the homescreen sustains the basic tasks the target user may often need to accomplish by owning a phone. In addition, for users to experience reduced charging cycles, save on the cost of paying to charge a phone and enjoy increased usage time, the design incorporates 16 shades of grey to support low power modes for device display.

What may appear as complex navigations and interactions to the target users have been simplified. There is less abrupt departure from the homescreen: features/options can be accessed with one step away with the homescreen still faded in the background. Life-enhancing pre-installed widgets can intuitively be accessed by a swipe gesture indicated by the two hand icons – a boost to the quick learning curve for user to try out swipe capabilities. This aims to motivate, involve and immerse the user. Overall, the design is simple, useful and usable.

What steps did you take to come to your final design?

I conducted research into the target users: the insightful articles and research findings published by GSMA mWomen provided an in-depth understanding of the target users and existing gaps. I watched ‘Designing User Interfaces for Novice and Low-Literacy Users’ by Indrani Medhi and went through some of her research based on Text-Free User Interfaces. In order to understand use of iconography at entry level of learning, the One Laptop Per Child (OLPD) project is an example of a resourceful reference point. The guidelines for designing user interface for Android Jelly Bean were handy too.

As evident in many rural areas in developing markets, access to electricity is an infrastructural challenge. To charge their phones, users have to go to the nearest shopping centre and pay a fee. It was therefore important to look into means of designing for low power consumption in order to elongate residual battery capacity. A look at platforms that use shades of grey such as the Nook tablet was significant.

I also conducted user testing. Seven respondents were asked to interpret the icons. These were women with basic primary education who sell vegetables around my neighbourhood in the outskirts of Nairobi city. The plant nurturing metaphor (to denote tracking phone minutes, data usage and expenditure) was not tested.

What challenges did you overcome in the design process?

Arranging and positioning of the basic tasks and apps into tabs was a crucial step to overcome clutter and maintain as simplified homescreen. This is was important to reduce the complexity and number of steps needed to access features by making them readily available on the homescreen.

In order for the user to navigate and access pre-installed widgets, a swipe gesture was deemed useful. However, to assume that users will intuitively know how to use this swipe gesture feature without visual assistance would prove to be difficult. Hand icons were used to provide clues and fulfil this goal.

I was not very sure to what extent tracking phone minutes, data usage and expenditure can accurately be reflected – due to the assumption that the user may have to input some form of data (e.g. airtime in form of currency), unless the platform automatically connects to the service provider in the background to access, sync and present this information (even when different SIM cards are used on the same device or when different call rates are offered by a service provider during different times of the day). Due to this perceived complexity, I used an icon that represents nurturing metaphor. I thought this was a much natural approach as compared to using coin icons which can also be confusing: countries that have experienced high inflation rates may rarely use coins to purchase airtime due to the coins’ very low denomination value. In my assumption, it may be easier to reflect the tracking of phone minutes, data usage and expenditure using the plant metaphor especially where linear reflection of the usage status may not be accurate.

Consolidating appropriate context to meet the needs of target users but yet cut across the various cultural, economic, technical constraints, among others, was a challenging decision. According to reference sources, it was noted that users with low literacy levels were comfortable interacting with interfaces consisting of images and numbers but may find text-based labels intimidating. These users are comfortable using numbers due to the ability to count duration (time, days and months) and use currency. It became clear that text based interfaces should exclusively be used in messages and then offset by provision of voice features.

What does winning this award mean to you/your organisation?

I am excited and humbled to receive this prestigious award. It is a tremendous boost and encourages me to work harder in the field of user experience design. With still few practitioners in developing markets, it provides much needed publicity and helps raise my professional profile.

Winning in this category highlights the importance of focusing on the needs of women users at the bottom of the pyramid and emphasises the central role user experience plays in meeting these needs.

As a designer, it means taking a proactive initiative to further develop and bring the current design into reality.

How do you want to develop the design in the future?

Through a user centred design approach, user experience best practices and open innovation through co-creative collaboration with project members and key stakeholders. I believe this is an innovative approach and speeds time to market.

To begin with, this involves refining and extending current design concept. At the basic/abstract level, it entails working with wireframes to define, document and communicate end-to-end concepts with project members and key stakeholders through functional specifications, task flows, information design, interface design and iteration.

Rapid prototypes of the wireframes can then be constructed (e.g. using software such as Flowella) in order to facilitate on the ground user tests and obtain first hand feedback. This will be undertaken in small doses, depending on the various tasks and derived user goals. This is a critical step to identify fundamental design problems earlier in the design process. It is a learning experience from the design perspective which further helps to garner insight of the mental models of the target user – motivations and other deeper considerations that separate good experiences from the great ones.

Continuous iteration and on-the-ground user tests will have to be conducted to solidify the concept into a seamless user experience, to satisfy the user needs and add value.

‘Look and feel’ graphics can then be developed and tested as rapid prototypes with users on the ground, again in small doses, depending on the tasks and user goals. Appropriate steps will be taken to refine the visual design.

Finally, documentation of the user experience design guidelines (styles and mock-ups) will be a definitive step in handing out the design concept for implementation by Android developers. This also involves fleshing out the graphical elements. Communication with the development team is crucial to ensure consistent user experience and bringing it life.

Follow-up and involvement in the consequent pilot stage and user-evaluation phases will be essential in measuring the effectiveness of the working prototype with the target users before refinement and final release to the market.

Any other comments?

I really want to take this opportunity to thank GSMA mWomen and partners for this award and recognition. With user experience practice slowly gaining acceptance in Africa, this award motivates me to continue to pursue my passion in this field.

I did it to challenge myself. Having spent most of my time in the Middle East and in Canada, my perception of world issues is kind of jaded. This was an opportunity for me to create something with empathy and really understand the situation from another person’s point of view. 

Explain why your design is suitable for resource-poor women.

I think the goal of this design was to simplify functions and present only what is needed for women in these environments. I didn’t want to make them feel overwhelmed, instead just show them what they need, when they need it.

What steps did you take to come to your final design?

Since I didn’t fully understand the situation of resource-poor women, the first thing on my checklist was to get myself caught up with the pain points and the current solutions that are already out there. Luckily, I found some great shoulders to stand on. Indrani Medhi’s journals were incredibly useful in showing how cartoon-like icons are highly comprehensible by a lower literate audience. While I didn’t get the chance to do much primary research, I learned from the experiences of parents of close immigrant friends, to see how they dealt with these issues back home. This was definitely a great first step into understanding the problem.

What challenges did you overcome in the design process?

One of the main challenges was to create a visual language for the icons with a tone that was not condescending or overly complex. It had to achieve that balance of knowledge and empathy.

What does winning this award mean to you?

When people come up with ideas, validation is often needed to see if whatever you came up with has the potential to improve or change something in the world. This award was just that. It feels great to hear that you are on the right path and be appreciated for the hard work. Just by taking a look at the ten finalists, I was just blown away by the different ways that people perceived and solved the problem. Imagine if these ideas are all implemented and brought into market! 

How do you want to develop the design in the future?

I hope my design has inspired someone to get tinkering away on a few improvements. I would love to collaborate with people to bring this to reality and see if these ideas hold any ground when in use.

Any other comments?

I would like to thank everyone involved for creating an opportunity that was both meaningful and fun to work on. Thank you.

Broadband access key to meeting gender-related MDGs

Commissioners gathered for the 7th meeting of the Broadband Commission for Digital Development, held yesterday in Mexico City, have agreed an ambitious new target designed to spur female access to the power of information and communication technologies (ICTs).

The new target mandates ‘gender equality in broadband access by the year 2020’. At present, ITU figures confirm that in the developing world, women are much less likely to have access to technology than their male counterparts. While that disparity is lower in developed countries, a measureable gap nonetheless still exists, even in the rich world.

“Women’s access to ICTs and particularly broadband must be made a key pillar of the post-2015 global development agenda,” said Dr Hamadoun I. Touré, ITU Secretary-General and co-Vice Chair of the Commission. “The mobile miracle has clearly demonstrated how powerful information and communication technologies can be in driving economic growth. However, figures from ITU and its sister agencies like UNESCO and UNDP show a clear ‘gender gap’ in access to technology. We need to redress that imbalance to ensure that all people are empowered to take control of their own destinies through ICTs.”

The new gender target was one decisive outcome of the first face-to-face meeting of the Broadband Commission Working Group on Gender, which was launched in New York in 2012 by Geena Davis, actor, advocate and ITU’s Special Envoy on Women and Girls.

Chaired by Helen Clark, Administrator of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the Working Group on Gender meeting attracted 69 Commissioners, special representatives and guest experts, making it the best-attended Working Group of the Commission to date.

“In a world where ICTs empower, lack of equal opportunity for women and girls to access those technologies risks thwarting development progress,” said Clark. “If we can find ways to close the gender gap in ICT access, we can not only help empower individual women and girls, and their families, but catalyze the kind of inclusive and sustainable development which benefits us all.”

The gender group meeting, which took place on Saturday 16 March, featured presentations by a number of organizations leading projects in the ‘gender and technology’ space, including Changecorp, GSMA, Intel, Telecentre.org and ITU. ITU’s digital literacy partnership with Telecentre.org has already trained over 625,000 women in basic digital skills, and is well on track to meet its target of one million women trained by 2015.

The meeting was followed by a Commission visit to ‘Aldea Digital’ (Digital Village), a three-day ‘living lab’ showcasing the broadband networks, services and applications at the heart of today’s and tomorrow’s world.

Yesterday’s full meeting of over 30 Commission members and their representatives endorsed the target proposed by the Gender Working Group, requested that members of that group implement a project ‘dashboard’ to track gender and technology initiatives worldwide, and mandated the group to deliver its first set of outcomes to the next meeting of the Commission in September in New York.

Yesterday’s Commission meeting also saw in-depth discussions on roadblocks to faster broadband deployment and potential solutions to impediments such as investment financing, with the focus on innovative strategies to help countries accelerate progress towards achieving the ambitious broadband access targets set by the Commission in 2011.

First of all, tell us about the design’s name.

”Sahel” is a transliteration of the Arabic words ساحل referring to the African Sahel region, and سهل meaning “easy”. “Shake” is intended as a wink to Android’s releases named after sugary treats. 

Why did you enter the GSMA mWomen Design Challenge?

We really wanted to explore what could be done to simplify the user interface and make it friendlier to use for resource-poor women in emerging markets. We have all worked at organizations focused on social impact and have worked with mobile, but have not had the opportunity design a mobile operating system from the ground up; the challenge was really exciting and meaningful to us.

One of the reasons we entered was that while we regularly work with mobile technology in emerging markets, we never had the chance to challenge the difficulties that came with using a technology with illiterate users. We always had to work with existing user interfaces and find ways to “make it work”. With this challenge, it was invigorating to address the root of the problem and solve it from there, while thinking about the incredible possibilities (even in existing development programs) that would open up. Imagine how much easier things would be to implement if you didn’t have to battle the technology or work around it.

Why is your design suitable for resource-poor women?

Sahel Shake seeks to alleviate barriers to mobile phone ownership and use for women in low and middle income markets.

A phone without battery charge or airtime, far from available top-up credit, is not only useless, it undermines the value proposition of mobile ownership by reducing confidence in the technology and mobile network operator. Sahel Shake gives women control over their phone resources, providing prominent airtime and battery management widgets along with cost-conscious phone sharing and emergency SMS features.

Smart phones rely greatly on text input and display, however many potential users cannot use these methods. Drawing from research on interface design for low-literacy contexts, Sahel Shake improves the usability of overly complex phone features, offers an engaging and highly visual contact management system, and integrates voice and icons into SMS entry and delivery.

What steps did you take to come to your final design?

We started out with a deep dive into the research on illiteracy and mobile phone use. To our surprise, there was already a great deal of literature on the subject and we do want to acknowledge the work of Indrani Medhi, Hendrik Knoche, and Jan Chipchase, among others.

For this concept, we mostly relied on our own experiences in emerging markets as well as those of some of our relatives who have dealt with these challenges before. This meant challenging some assumptions about features for a mobile phone. For example, an emergency call button is very useful in the U.S. or other markets with a strong 911 system, but this is not the case in most emerging markets. Our goal was to design Sahel Shake in a way that made users’ lives easier, within the context of their existing environment. This meant simplifying a lot of the confusing options and menus, while also giving the user more control over how much credit they spend on the phone, how the battery is managed, and how the phone is shared.

In addition to the literature review, we started out with the Android Ice Cream Sandwich operating system as a starting point for our design. From there, the process was very much a sprint, with the functional specifications and screen layouts built in parallel. Working nights and weekends, we were able to refine the concept and edit down a lot of extraneous operating system features until we were left with something that balanced power and function.

What challenges did you overcome in the design process?

As a group of three friends who did this on our own time, we didn’t leverage institutional resources to create the concept. This required us to think creatively and rely on our knowledge and experience of mobile behaviors in emerging markets, as well as available research: naturally, this concept will require direct user testing and refinement. The second challenge was finding ways to collaborate remotely with a geographically dispersed team. Angel was based on the West Coast, while Jeremy and Sarah were in New York City. That said, we really came together as a team, divided the work, and used Google Hangouts for team communications (and a bit of fun).

What does winning mean to your team?

We are very excited to see the reception that the Sahel Shake concept has received. We’d like to thank GSMA mWomen, Ooredoo, USAID and AusAid for giving us the chance to share this design with the attendees of Mobile World Congress, as well as a wider audience. As designers, it is always a privilege to share our work on this type of platform and have the opportunity to bring our work to life.

On a more personal level, it feels really good to win this award since Sahel Shake was designed with members of our own family and communities we’ve worked with in mind. Finding potential ways to help them interact with technology and all the opportunities that come with it and being able to say “we understood you” is incredible validation.

How do you want to develop the design in the future?

In our design, we did our best to ensure that everything was technically feasible based on existing Android capabilities, but it will be important to get feedback from a mobile network operator as well, since they may be dealing with other restrictions or limitations that we are unaware of. From there, we would love to see the concept refined, built, prototyped, and tested in the field. Even if the concept is not implemented as whole that at least a few of the ideas will filter into mobile operating system designs. We believe there is a tremendous opportunity here in bringing the mobile ecosystem to a group that has historically been left out.

Any other comments?

We would like to thank Daniel Kahn, who contributed thoughtful comments and edits as an advisor to the team.

Check back next week to hear from Aloke Pillai, whose design ‘mPower’ won the Second Prize of $10,000.

Photo: (l-r) Sarah Fathallah (second from left) and Angel Kittiyachavalit (centre) accept the Grand Prize for their team’s design ‘Sahel Shake’ and are congratulated by Chris Locke, GSMA (left), Cynthia Gordan, Oredoo (second from right) and Maura O’Neill, USAID. 

Photo Credit: Björn Göttlicher 

In 2011, women made up only 20% of Iraqi operator’s subscriber base. Asiacell conducted consumer insights research to understand the needs of women in its market and launched the Almas Line of products. The features of this offering match the needs of Iraqi women for mobile technology and included “step charging,” which offers a 50% discount after the third minute; freedom for women to choose their own off-peak hours; discounted rates for off-network calls and a free “bye-bye” service that blocks potential harassers from calling or texting.

Since the launch of the product in April 2011, the proportion of Asiacell’s female customers has grown to close to 40% and about 1.8 million women in Iraq have been connected to friends and family, and are becoming more socially and financially independent, thanks to their access to mobile technology.

The judges remarked that Asiacell’s Almas Line offering demonstrated a “very smart, well thought-out approach, with measurable, large-scale impact directly to women. The idea of marketing the SIM as a premier line is brilliant. It appeals to deep traditional values, aspirational but not elitist.”

For their design, ‘Sahel Shake,’ Jeremy Canfield, Sarah Fathallah and Angel Kittiyachavalit today received the Grand Prize of US$ 20,000, presented by Qtel Group CEO Dr. Nasser Marafih. Second place, with a prize of $10,000 USD, was awarded to Aloke Pillai of the York Sheridan Design Program for ‘mpower’. The Emerging Talent Prize of $10,000 USD, which is reserved for an entry from emerging markets to ensure entrepreneurs are able to compete alongside professional design firms, was awarded to Raphael Mutiso, from Kenya for his entry ‘Simplified Grayscale Power Efficient Interface.’

“The standard of entries was extremely high, but the winning submissions were outstanding and we heartily congratulate them all,” said Chris Locke, Managing Director, GSMA Mobile for Development and member of the GSMA mWomen Design Challenge selection panel. “Designing for the specific needs of resource-poor consumers is vital to increasing access to mobile’s social benefits, as well as increasing commercial value for the mobile industry.”

Dr. Nasser Marafih, Qtel Group CEO, said on presenting the Grand Prize: “We are delighted to be involved in the GSMA mWomen Design Challenge, as it seeks to address technical literacy issues for under-served communities around the world. The energy, creativity and innovation demonstrated by all the entrants are an inspiration and we believe that the winning entries will play a vital role in enriching the lives of women in the near future. Our congratulations go to the winners, and our thanks go to the GSMA and all the partners for their support for this competition. We are looking forward to exploring the opportunity to bring to market those innovations.”

Grand prize-winning team Jeremy Canfield, Sarah Fathallah and Angel Kittiyachavalit said: “We are thrilled to have the chance to share this design with the attendees of Mobile World Congress as well as a wider audience. We particularly want to thank GSMA mWomen, Qtel Group, USAID and AusAID. As designers, it is always a privilege to share our work on this type of platform and have the opportunity to bring this design to life.”

USAID Chief Innovation Officer and Senior Counselor Maura O’Neill noted that, “we launched the Design Challenge to curate the best ideas for reimagining how women engage with mobile technologies.  Our sincere congratulations to the winners.  We are eager to see their designs catalyze the industry and kindle a new movement to address the mobile needs of women everywhere.”

In emerging markets, feature phones with basic voice and SMS capabilities are currently the standard. However, smartphones are forecast to proliferate¹ in these markets over the next few years, becoming the main way people in developing countries will access information, the internet and its associated benefits. However, there is a mobile phone gender gap in low to middle-income countries, where 21 per cent fewer women than men have access to this potentially life-enhancing tool.

The GSMA mWomen Design Challenge was created to simplify the smartphone user interface to help overcome reading and technical literacy barriers to adoption. Twenty-two per cent of women surveyed in Egypt, India, Papua New Guinea and Uganda who do not use mobile phones say it is because they do not know how to use them.

“The GSMA mWomen Design Challenge team gratefully acknowledges the support of partners Skipso and Small Surfaces in implementing the competition,” continued Locke. “It is through clever and thoughtful design that we as an industry can work together to help close the gender gap in phone ownership by women.”

Around the world more than 2 billion people, the majority of whom are women, lack access to basic financial services. The study, led by Bankable Frontier Associates, found that women often also face an additional burden of having primary responsibility for managing the household finances. These resource-poor women must overcome numerous challenges in managing their finances: incomes are low, irregular and unpredictable, and formal financial tools hard to access.

Key report findings include:

• Women actively contribute to household income -75 per cent of women surveyed contribute some amount of income, most often from irregular sources like small businesses or agricultural sales;
• Women use a variety of tools to manage household finances – Nearly 60 per cent of women surveyed are saving money for daily expenses and long-term needs and a full one-third pay the family’s utility bills or make other types of remittances; and
• Women recognise the security and privacy of mobile money – In Kenya, for example, 95 per cent of women using mobile remittances rated them as secure and private. In comparison, only roughly half of those using personal delivery of cash as their primary method consider it secure and private.  

“At Visa, we believe mobile technology is a key component in advancing financial inclusion, providing the excluded a convenient and accessible point of entry to the formal financial system,” said Aletha Ling, Chief Operating Officer of Fundamo, a Visa company. “This is particularly true for women, who face additional barriers to entering the financial mainstream and for whom security and privacy are critical issues. By working to build relevant services, expand distribution networks and tailor their marketing efforts, the mobile financial services community can create better approaches for reaching this underserved group.”

“This research clearly demonstrates that women play a critical role in the success of mobile financial services deployment,” said Chris Locke, Managing Director, GSMA Mobile for Development. “It underscores the fact that services delivered via mobile phone can better meet women’s financial management needs than many of the informal tools they use today and, equally important, provides actionable guidance about how MFS providers can best expand and market their services to better address women’s requirements.”  

According to the report, women are active contributors to household incomes, and as household financial managers, they are responsible for a variety of transactions such as remittances, payments and money storage that MFS providers are well-positioned to deliver. As an additional commercial benefit to MFS providers, when women’s financial and payment needs are met consistently, they can be very loyal and evangelising customers. Furthermore, their role as primary recipients of government-to-person payments means that providers who serve women, may be better positioned to provide solutions for the emerging wave of payments in the future.

Daryl Collins, co-author of the seminal work, Portfolios of the Poor, and a director at Bankable Frontier Associates, said: “This study has shown that low-income women undertake complex financial management for their households using a set of often sub-standard instruments. Women often work with high frequency, low value cash flows, which indicates a good match between the services they need and the opportunity for the mobile financial services industry to broaden and stabilize their consumer base.”

To better serve low-income women, reduce the mobile phone gender-gap¹ and increase the likelihood of commercial success for mobile financial service deployments in emerging markets, the report recommends:

• Increasing Mobile Access for Women –Thirty-four per cent of women in Tanzania, 13 per cent of women in Kenya and 10 per cent of women in Papua New Guinea who want to try mobile financial services cite the lack of a phone as the main reason for not having done so. Closing this gender gap can help MFS providers build scale and volume for their mobile financial service businesses;

• Increasing Awareness and Understanding of Mobile Financial Services – To benefit from the stability and scale of active women customers, providers need to research how women in their markets learn and absorb information and tailor their communications.   Investments in agent training and grassroots communications will help build awareness and more importantly, help educate women on the value of MFS;

• Delivering a high-quality customer service offering – Women tend to value convenience, reliability, security and privacy in financial management tools.  Investments in marketing, services, customer care and agent networks will enable providers to better meet these needs.  Accessible, well-trained and trustworthy agents will drive greater adoption among women and men alike; and

• Improving Understanding of and Developing Solutions to Adoption Barriers – The research also unearthed country-specific adoption barriers that need to be addressed with targeted solutions. For example, in Kenya, the lack of an identification card is a significant issue for women. In Pakistan, low literacy levels appear to contribute to women’s limited understanding of mobile financial services. Country-specific research will lead to targeted marketing approaches that can broaden the potential user base for MFS.  

While mobile financial services offer value to women household financial managers, there are several markets where adoption has been slow for both genders. Although barriers to adoption certainly vary by market, women in a given market tend to experience similar and yet more acute challenges than men, meaning a focused effort on women can also improve male adoption as well.