South Africa
Lesotho
Mozambique
Tanzania
DRCWorking with government
We work closely with technology companies, NGOs and all levels of government (local, provincial and national) to fi nd innovative ways to apply our technology and expertise in accelerating and broadening the delivery of health and educational training, services and solutions. We’re also helping public-sector planners to realise the goal of ‘the connected citizen’. We continue to work closely with all relevant government departments to make sure we understand what they want to achieve so we can come up with solutions that meet the needs of both government and citizens.
Education
In Gauteng, we started rolling out a programme to give 2 400 school principals wireless connectivity in the year. This allows them to interact with the authorities, their school communities and each other using applications hosted on BlackBerry devices.
In Mpumalanga, one of the South African provinces with poor matric exam results in 2009, Vodacom employees volunteered to give extra lessons in English, maths, science, economics and business studies to the 2010 matric class. The headmaster of the ZB Kunene Secondary School later said that the extra tuition was directly responsible for a 64% improvement in the pass rate.
Our customers contributed directly to providing 48 computer centres at schools in 2011. Some R2 million this year was raised from SMSs sent by entrants to our popular Vodacom Millionaires TV competition. The full value of these SMSs went to pay for the computer centres, each making ten computers, a server, software and training materials available to learners.
Health
Broadening access to quality healthcare is a priority for all governments in the countries we operate in. Traditionally, the Vodacom Foundations in each country were responsible for our contributions to this critical national objective. Although we’re still very involved in healthcare through our social investment initiatives, we’re also developing commercial solutions for the industry that use the power of mobile connectivity and ICT services to improve healthcare delivery.
In 2011 the Vodacom Foundation co-invested in the Wits Sexual and Reproductive Health Institute, an HIV/Aids advisory centre. The centre is located in the old General Hospital building in Hillbrow, which is currently being extensively renovated. It offers advice and training on HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases to residents of inner city Johannesburg and further afi eld. A state-of-the-art research facility will be housed in the same building. We spent R14 million on the centre.
We worked with the National Department of Health in South Africa to roll out a mobile health (‘mHealth’) programme that uses mobile communications to address HIV/Aids.
SMS messages are sent to customers with information on prevention, and details on where to get support. The Young Africa Live portal, sponsored by our partner, the Praekelt Foundation, is hosted on Vodafone live! and aims to get young people discussing health, sex and lifestyle issues. mHealth text alerts also remind customers about follow-up appointments and help them to adhere to their treatment schedules. We spent R5 million on this mHealth project in 2011.
Using the newest technology to connect healthcare providers across different countries, devices and networks, we are able to provide solutions that are making healthcare delivery more effective.