The report published recently entitled “Sustainable Access to Energy & Water through M2M Connectivity“ is the result of this research and aims to shed light on the opportunities created by M2M solutions to reach and empower underserved populations in the developing world.

The same way SMS messages have become one of the building blocks of modern communications in emerging markets, simple GSM M2M connectivity could create seamless networks of connected infrastructures and devices beyond wealthy urban circles. In underserved urban and rural locations (2.47 billion people were living with less than USD2 per day in 2008), M2M connectivity has the potential to bring more resilience to decentralized systems often plagued by poor maintenance and will allow to collect critical information about the population who use them. It is also about creating two way communications platforms, where end users are connected to their service providers through the systems they are using, at a personal or community level; it is about building stronger relationships between institutions and households often living without access to sustainable energy, clean water and/or financial institutions.

Some key facts from the report:

• From urban to rural areas, mobile networks have become the predominant infrastructure in emerging markets, allowing more people to be covered by mobile networks than have access to energy and water. GSM infrastructure is increasingly reaching far corners of the world, mobile handsets are increasingly getting into the hands of low income population (even though there remains room for growth [1]) and M2M modules can be more easily integrated in a wide range of equipment.
• If service delivery remains critical to commercial success and sustainability, technology can surely support business models and empower customers. In the M-KOPA example, the convergence of GSM M2M connectivity for remote monitoring of Solar Home Systems and mobile payments through the M-PESA platform is allowing low income population to afford clean energy solutions under a Pay As You Go model.
• Mobile technology has a social impact, especially when it is the only available infrastructure. Considering water access in Africa, where there are important problems of maintenance and sustainability of water pumps, the inclusion of M2M connectivity in simple water pump structures would increase real time information about water access and quality at the local and national level.
• Beyond pilots and nascent commercial deployments, some challenges remain for entrepreneurs providing M2M-based services to better reach the full population lacking access to energy and water. As an important element to achieve scale in resource constrained economies, a section of the report is focusing on the opportunity to design a new GSM M2M module: a simpler module design integrating lighter functionality and achieving lower cost would stimulate the integration of M2M in a wider range of products.

Opportunities and challenges lie ahead, as the success and the scale of such M2M based services at the Bottom of the Pyramid (BoP) will require active participation from chipset suppliers, entrepreneurs, mobile operators, regulators. M-KOPA, currently providing Pay As You Go solutions for energy access in Kenya, presents at the end of this report, their in-depth testimony about the challenges they envision in increasing the impact and scale of M2M services for the BoP.

In this coming year, the GSMA will continue its efforts to raise awareness around the potential and challenges of M2M solutions for underserved populations, connect main stakeholders to catalyse market growth and support innovation from micro-entrepreneurs in this space.

Historically, Senegal has provided leadership in the continent and represents a hub of democracy and political stability in the West African region ⁴. However, one of its challenges is the high unemployment rate (49% in 2010)⁵ that especially impacts a young generation of students coming out of the local universities. As part of its Poverty Reduction Strategy, the Senegalese government is now promoting entrepreneurship to create wealth and foster economic opportunities.

One of the engines for economic growth and job creation could be fuelled by a dynamic mobile market and strong ICT skills from a young generation of entrepreneurs. After a recent visit to the CTIC in Dakar, the local incubator for ICT and mobile technology entrepreneurs, there is a real sense that technology entrepreneurship is beginning to boom in this part of West Africa.

Leveraging the strong engineering programs from the local universities, the CTIC supports companies and project leaders in their creation, development and growth. Less than two years after its creation, CTIC currently supports 11 companies and had 24 startups in its 3 to 6 months acceleration program. Some of them are now expanding their activities in other West African countries. Supported by private and public sector partners (InfoDev, IFC, Sonatel, GIZ, Center for Development of the Enterprise (CDE), the Government of Senegal, etc.), the CTIC also fosters the regional ICT Entrepreneurship ecosystem through seminars, workshops, networking events and other events, like Startup Weekends.

At the recent DEMO Africa conference in Nairobi, showcasing 40 emerging African startups, Senegal was the only French-speaking country represented, with 3 companies presenting their solutions. These 3 companies were incubated at the CTIC, including agribusiness resource Mlouma.

Mlouma is a web and mobile service that allows farmers and agribusiness to connect and receive information about the purchase or sale of agricultural products through real-time market information. In a country prone to drought and where nearly 70% of the overall workforce in Senegal is engaged in the agricultural sector, initiatives such as Mlouma are key to empowering small-holder farmers and building resilience. As only 20% of the population has direct access to the internet, mobile phones are most of the time the only tools of empowerment for the rural farmers.

With key events such as Startup Weekends, TechCamp Dakar in August 2012–the first TechCamp to be hosted in Africa⁶ – and Apps4Africa held in Dakar in December 2012, Senegal is steadily becoming another major innovation hub in Africa for developers and technology entrepreneurs. Added to CTIC work, technologists can also count on the Bantalabs, supporting the developer’s community, and Jokkolabs, an “action tank” for social change, to provide support to local projects.

Capitalising on their strong program, the CTIC is currently looking to replicate its model and build partnerships with incubators from other African countries such as Mali, Ivory Coast, Niger and Gabon. Adding to the current local technology hubs, this is a positive step to foster innovation and further support the growth of technology entrepreneurship for the creation of commercially-viable businesses and socially-impactful projects.

Photo: Courtesy of CTIC

Below are our favourite pictures from our travels in 2012.

Women collecting water at dusk in Senegal, about 50km from Tambacounda.

A sorry state of sanitation near Kaolack in Senegal.

Mobile subscribers place their phones on 6 foot high sticks to capture mobile signals in Sofala, Mozambique.

An OMC Power employee completes a daily delivery of charged lanterns to customer households in Uttar Pradesh, India.

In a Nicaraguan village that just received mobile signal, a phone charging business emerges at US$0.20 per charge.

In a post published just as Sandy made landfall along the southern US coast, our Disaster Response team outlined the preparations that US mobile operators were making to help mitigate the impact on networks, including portable generators for back-up power supply  and installing high capacity batteries. Despite these efforts, power outages and flooding disrupted some telecom services in the Northeastern states, affecting coverage for cellphones, television, home telephones and internet services.

For those who still had mobile coverage, the power outages meant mobile phone data plans became  important lifelines to stay informed about Sandy, with many relying on Twitter for announcements and updates in their area. This contrast of using mobile data during the power outages posed an interesting exchange at the time on Twitter, with the below tweet from New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof.

This prompted Richenda Van Leeuwen, the Executive Director for the UN Foundation’s Energy and Climate, Energy Access Initiative, to respond with the below tweet:

As power outages continued in the days post-Sandy, a challenge grew for those using their devices to stay connected when battery levels died. This meant many people were left searching for creative ways to charge their devices around New York City. One Manhattan-based clean tech writer got lucky with her Nokero SunRay Pro Power solar panel, allowing her to charge her phone and later explaining that, “…only one of them would generate enough charge through my window on an overcast day to charge my phone, and that device was the Nokero Pro Power Panel. Nokero had graciously sent me the power panel the year before as a product sample, and I don’t know what I would have done if I hadn’t happened to have this nifty little gadget in my house.”

Nokero, along with other off-grid product companies such as Barefoot Power Ltd., Fenix International and Azuri Technologies, manufactures and distributes affordable, sustainable and safe solar-based technology including lights and battery chargers. These companies provide solar-powered light and charging products for those highlighted by Van Leeuwen in her tweet, the other 1.3 billion people in emerging markets without access to the electricity grid. With the majority living in Sub-Saharan Africa and underdeveloped parts of Asia, this lack of electricity is an everyday reality. As mobile has outpaced the grid, those with mobiles have the added challenge of finding a charging source, which often means walking for miles to the nearest charging kiosk and paying for the service. For example, the CPM team was recently in Mozambique, where 97% of rural households do not have grid power and where in some towns, kiosks and barbers make good business at about US$0.30 per phone charge. As well as staying connected to family and friends, fully-charged devices allow people to access and use valuable life-enhancing services, such as mobile money, health and agricultural information.

As the International Year of Sustainable Energy for All draws to a close, perhaps the post-Sandy experiences of those in the Northeastern states who were trying to use their mobile phones without grid power will help to shine a light on the 1.3 billion people currently living without access to electricity, many with mobile phones themselves.

Photo: Top left, from  DNAinfo.com New York

We hopped on planes from Nicaragua, London, India, Dubai and Kenya to meet in Accra, Ghana. Mary was the first to arrive and spent time at the first International Off-grid Renewable Energy Conference which was co-hosted by IRENA, Alliance of Rural Electrification and ECREEE. The two-day event covered policy, regulation, finance and technical topics through eight sessions, six workshops and 27 exhibitors. Mary was also invited to speak on the panel, ‘Innovation and Findings in the Field of Off-Grid Renewable Energy.’

The rest of us arrived on the 5^th November, and we hosted our inaugural Community Power from Mobile Working Group, which was sponsored by Tigo, at the Movenpick Ambassador Hotel.

Mary opened the day and gave an overview of the history of Community Power from Mobile. Following this, we invited Garry Bridgwater, Integrity Manager at Millicom, to give a welcome presentation and he talked through the role of the Integrity team to reduce energy consumption and promote sustainability. Their strategy has a strong ethos to create value, reduce cost, develop legitimacy and reputation and as a result to gain competitive advantage.

To conclude the morning’s session, Michel Mansard, member of the Alliance for Rural Electrification Board, shared lessons learned. The conclusion was drawn that there is no single business model to address the 1.4 billion people without access to electricity and that what is required is a bottom-up de-centralised approach with long-term partners as well as policies and regulations with clear targets.

The rest of the day was divided into 3 panel discussions:

• Panel 1 – Mobile Operators Driving Community Power from Mobile
• Panel 2 – Leveraging Mobile Infrastructure for Community Energy
• Panel 3 – Mobile Enhanced Utility Access and Leveraging Distribution Channels

Further details about the outcome of these panels can be found on our highlights document.

Sanjay Khazanchi from the Rockefeller Foundation’s SPEED programme concluded the day, talking about their rural electrification programme in India. Rockefeller Foundation also generously sponsored an evening cocktail reception for the group.

The next two days were also spent at the Movenpick Ambassador, this time for the Green Power for Mobile African Regional Working Group. For more details on the outcomes from this event, please see our highlights document.

By the 8^th November, Mary and I were ready to get out into the field and had the opportunity to visit an Altobridge Lite-Site in Botuku. We made the three-hour journey there and were welcomed by the village elders who were keen to show us around the site and tell us what impact having mobile communication had on their lives. There were particularly excited about the new ICT centre and library that was being constructed in the village, courtesy of their local government. They even took our email addresses so that they can keep in touch when the facilities are up and running!

While my time in Accra came to an end, Mary and Michael continued on to Dakar. Stayed tuned to hear more about the Lighting Africa Conference and their three-day road trip around Senegal!

In the remote communities around Ganze, near the Kenyan coast, charging a mobile phone is a major challenge.  The nearest source of electricity may be 15-20 km away, about a three hour walk. Typically, communities gather their phones together and someone takes them and deposits them at a charging kiosk in Ganze. Two days later, someone else makes the same journey to collect the charged phones. As a result, residents of the remote communities are without mobile communications for days at a time, and often turn off their phones to preserve battery, impacting their business activities and reducing their ability to keep in contact with friends or family. Many fear losing their phones while they are away being charged.

But in one community 15 kilometres from Ganze, things are changing. Samuel Kapelekesho started providing a phone charging service from his grocery shop four months ago, bringing significant benefits to him and the community. Since he started charging phones, sales of goods at his shop have increased. Samuel also sells the local hooch, called Mnazi, which is made from fermented coconut milk.  Many of his customers like to share a drink while they wait the two hours for their phone to charge. He has a lot of happy customers!

Three of Samuel’s customers enjoying a bottle of Mnazi

Samuel is one of ten entrepreneurs participating in a trial of a solar phone charging unit called Mobi, developed by award winning company Azuri. The compact battery unit, solar panel and two LED lights, has been designed to operate on a ‘pay-as-you-go’ basis similar to Indigo, the company’s home lighting product.  An entrepreneur pays a deposit to acquire the system and then pays a monthly fee to access a code which is used to reactivate the system through a key pad on the unit. Payments are made through mobile money.

The ten participants in the trial were recruited by GVEP International which advertised the business opportunity and screened over one hundred applicants. GVEP staff provide business coaching for the participating entrepreneurs and are gathering data on the trial. I visited all ten entrepreneurs during October, with Azuri staff joining me for some of the visits.

Samuel’s 30W panel outside the hut where he charges phones

Four months in, all of the participants in the trial say they are happy with the units. Mobi is much easier to use than a conventional solar system. It requires no maintenance and the simple plug and play design makes it easy to install. The units charge phones more quickly than a conventional system and the phones hold their charge for longer. The two LED lights which come as part of the kit will operate throughout the night and have enabled the entrepreneurs to eliminate kerosene from their homes and shops. There is a considerable saving in expenditure.

Fifty miles away from Ganze, another Mobi entrepreneur, John Kadzoyo runs an electrical store just off the main Mombasa/Nairobi highway. His Mobi unit is operated by his wife from their home some kilometres off the road. She is able to use the cash she earns to meet household expenditures. Before they had Mobi, the family kept small kerosene lamps burning during the night. ‘When we woke in the morning we had soot around our nostrils,’ John told me.

Jessica Kobe – half of the businesses are operated by women

Although nine out of ten of the entrepreneurs who signed up for Mobi are men, half of the units are actually operated by women – wife, mother, daughter or employee. Ruben Kobe, who has a welding shop in Kaloleni has set his daughter, Jessica, up in business with the Mobi unit he acquired. ‘She has a baby,’ he explains. ‘With Mobi she now has money for her needs and I do not have to worry about providing for her. Without Mobi she would just have been idle.’

In one location the entrepreneur who acquired Mobi has installed it in a community school where he is on the governing committee. The school has no electricity and the Mobi unit LEDs have been used to provide light for exam preparation classes held in the evening. Previously the school used kerosene lights.  The students bring in their parents’ phones when they come to school and take back the recharged phones in the evening.

In many locations competition is growing with many charging stations setting up. Phone ownership is still growing, as is the use of phones (airtime.) The standard rate for charging a phone is 20 shillings (US25 cents.) In two places Mobi operators were charging 15 shillings, and in one of those places a competitor was charging 10 shillings. We have been expecting to see price competition emerge for a while but this is the first time I have actually seen it.

A Mobi unit charging phones

Most of the entrepreneurs using Mobi had operated a phone charging service before using a conventional set up. A few are completely new to the venture. All appreciate the monthly payment system, everyone has been topping up regularly, and all say they plan to continue until they have bought the system. From the phone charging revenue, other additional revenue and savings on kerosene, the monthly top up was affordable for even the weakest performing business. All believe that they can hold their own against competitors because of the lower cost and higher performance of the Mobi unit.

Useful feedback was gathered on features which could be further improved. Azuri are now reviewing next steps with the ambition of starting to roll out an iterated version of Mobi at greater scale. A full evaluation of the trial will be completed by GVEP after a further two months of operation.  But the preliminary findings appear to be very encouraging.

From Muxuenge in the province of Sofala, the sandy road west heads 80 km to the town of Chitobe, soon leaving behind a power line and any evidence of easily accessible water supplies.  It is a dedicated task to receive an SMS on your mobile phone along a route with unreliable mobile coverage and no electricity!

Arriving just before dusk in Chitobe, there is hope that the isolated diesel-powered mini-grid will light the streets, but without funding for fuel we instead see a few indoor lights and the occasional noise of a TV or radio and proof of the free enterprise required to attain and provide services using solar power and car batteries.  During the day the market streets, alleys and roofs are scattered with solar panels brought in from Harare and Johannesburg, vastly overpaid for by earnest shopkeepers and bar owners.

Sticks used to help get better mobile connectivity in underserved Sofala

“Bem Vindo a Carga de Telefones”: Welcome to Charge Phones

All three mobile service operators have towers in in the town, but while there is no grid-power (like 97% of other rural households in Mozambique), kiosks and barbers make good business at about US$0.30 per phone charge.  This was the same price as one large torch battery and one large candle on sale. Some businesses provided a large variety of phone model charging plugs, as well as universal battery chargers (preferred by customers so they can keep the handset to avoid theft) and if they had more sockets and power, they would charge more phones.

Under the Grid but un-Powered

There was clear evidence of an unmet demand for electricity services in communities living across areas without power grid distribution, and this was the case even for those living directly under power lines (and fibre lines) because households cannot always afford connection and service without prepaid facilities.

With Power comes Water

Medical centres were in places provided with solar-powered water pumps with the ability for storage, but not always offered as a community-wide service. This did provide opportunity for a keen enterprise to earn a living from a diesel-powered water pump where free hand-pumped taps are on the other end of the village.

We look forward to the next opportunity to return to Mozambique and sharing news on the horizon of funding opportunities for off-grid energy services.

However, the number of M2M applications in developing countries currently only accounts for approximately 1.5% [2] of overall  usage due to several factors including the  high cost of M2M modules, the lack of open-standard platforms for M2M development, and a missing M2M strategy from mobile operators in these markets. Although the market in developing countries for smart grid, smart cars or smart buildings is still immature, the opportunity exists to leverage M2M in countries where the majority of people still lack access to electricity and clean water.

Given the lack of wired infrastructure in many developing countries, M2M technology – combined with novel or even existing energy, water, health and sanitation solutions – has the power to improve the standard of living of millions by making new business models possible. In the last 2 years we have seen significant growth in the number of organisations using M2M for basic community services.

Grundfos Lifelink’s, M2M-enabled solar-powered water pumps provides safe drinking water to small communities thanks to a combination of M2M remote monitoring in the pump unit and Safaricom’s mobile money platform (M-PESA). Also in East Africa, organisations like M-KOPA and Mobisol bring affordable solar energy solutions to off-grid low-income populations with the help of pay-as-you-go solar energy made possible by embedded GSM modules. Such energy solutions circumvent the problem of high initial costs of photovoltaic systems, allowing customers to pay for energy in instalments either towards ownership or using a micro utility model. In the long-run this means off-grid populations are less dependent on expensive and harmful energy sources such as kerosene, candles and disposable batteries.

On a recent trip to Kenya, we visited Mukuru, a slum in Nairobi where most of its 600,000 people coexist in severe poverty, with unreliable access to electricity, scarce or expensive access to water and limited sanitation. Companies like Sanergy, who build and sell sanitation units to local entrepreneurs, are developing new business opportunities, reducing open defecation and improving access to basic community services. In the future, M2M could be used by Sanergy in their sanitation units to further improve operations and tank emptying services. Such concepts would require a solid trial phase and the M2M solutions would need to prove real value to business operations, rather than being another technological hindrance capable of jeopardizing the business model.

The rise of tech hubs across emerging markets including the recently featured Silicon Savannah, combined with improved GSM coverage across developing countries, provide good conditions for more M2M innovation.  In countries like Kenya,  where 95% of the population is covered with basic 2G network infrastructure and only 16% of people have access to electricity, the potential exists to see millions of M2M solutions be deployed to even the most remote areas of the country. M2M could hence play of major part in delivering improved access to basic services to the poor, while the prospect of millions of active M2M-enabled devices using GSM networks represents a compelling incentive for MNOs and the broader mobile ecosystem.

Over the past few months, our newsfeed has been abuzz with the changes impacting our mobile industry partners in India.  From July’s historic blackout which left 620 million people without power but with mobile coverage, to TAIPA’s  plans to outsource green power to 100,000 towers, these events reflect the scale of the energy challenges India faces and the void the mobile industry is trying to fill.

In the midst of all of this, as correctly noted by Justin Guay of the Sierra Club in the Huffington Post, a landmark 10-year deal was signed between Bharti Infratel and OMC Power to build and operate micropower plants that are capable of delivering power to mobile towers and the community. To further illustrate the importance of this event, this is the first deal of its size where both telecom AND community energy requirements are part of the business plan from Day 1.

Since then, OMC Power has been featured on both the BBC and most recently on Forbes.  As noted in the Forbes article community uptake has surpassed OMC’s expectation reaching 30% penetration within 45 days.  Thus you can imagine our delight when we had the opportunity to spend the day with the team at OMC Power at their site in Uttar Pradesh to see what everyone was talking about.

While it is too soon to call their model a runaway success, there are several things we observed about OMC Power which is setting them on the right path.

Getting the basics right

OMC Power realises that what makes their model bankable–what makes their business model a credible investment decision–is to ensure that they deliver on their core business promise: providing steady power supply to their mobile industry customers.  Before venturing out to serve communities, the company stabilised its services to the mobile tower.

Delivering high-quality services to the community

With over 200 million people, Uttar Pradesh is India’s most populous state.  While reported electrification rates in the state are 88.3%, it is important to note that for a region to be deemed electrified it does not mean that all households have to be connected, or that power actually needs to run through the lines. Many of the villages we visited served by OMC Power have been waiting for close to 10 years to see electricity run through their grid.  OMC focusses on delivering high-quality 24/7 services to their rural customers commensurate with their income levels.  Smartly dressed OMC staff deliver and pick-up customers’ energy products to their doorsteps, and sleek nameplates affixed to homes identify OMC customers in the community helping neighbours recognise the most progressive of households.   OMC Power has also put special emphasis on delivering “luxury” services providing a fan as part of the OMC PowerBox ( or BijiliBox as it known locally in Hindi).

Innovate and Evaluate

By making community power central to OMC Power’s strategy, they have made understanding the wants and needs of rural customers an essential component of their business strategy.  In the few months since launching field operations, they have focussed on a process of continual innovation and evaluation: listening to customer feedback, testing new products and working with suppliers to adapt products to suit customer needs.

The company understands the need to develop a series of products that supports their customers’ transition up the energy ladder; starting with lighting and phone charging.  Over the next few months, we expect OMC to continue to push the innovation envelope, trialling new concepts and getting more granular on customer segmentation.

We look forward to following the progress of OMC Power over the next few months. We believe their entry into the markets paves the way for other energy service companies serving the mobile industry to pilot Community Power.

What follows is a photo slideshow of our visit to OMC Power in Uttar Pradesh. To view photo captions, expand to full screen mode.

In the midst of the chaos one thing remained constant: mobile coverage. Citizens across the affected areas were able to reach out to friends and loved ones highlighting the importance of mobile services during national emergencies.

The events of July 31st underscore the importance of reliable 24/7 power and the ability of the industry to deliver decentralised energy in the toughest of conditions. In an article on livemint.com Sanjay Kapoor, the CEO of Bharti Airtel India, explains that the country’s “robust mobile infrastructure has been created with an investment of over $100 billion by the telecom industry and compares with the best in the world.” With over 360,000 mobile towers across the country, the mobile industry effectively runs the largest network of decentralised energy systems in India.

India’s blackout and the impressive resilience of the mobile network signal the importance of back-up power planning and emergency preparedness. Governments across the developing world should work hand-and-hand with the mobile industry to ensure mobile service is not interrupted and that in the face of the worst of emergencies no citizen is left alone calling out in the dark.