Connectivity was made possible through the provision of two base stations and two internet cafes.

Dawn Haig-Thomas is the Director of the GSMA Development Fund. “We work with mobile operators and vendors to test and scale business models that bring sustainable GSM voice and internet connectivity to the poor,” she says.

The “digital divide” is a term used to describe the social divide between those who can afford digital technologies including a mobile phone and those who cannot.

“Our goal is to overcome that divide,” Haig-Thomas says. “We want to enable the connection of people who are currently unconnected, and through mobile usage we want to drive social, environmental and economic development in these countries.”

To date the Development Fund has completed over 20 projects across Africa and Asia, working with operators including MTN, Orascom, Telenor, Vodacom and Zain. Uganda is however the first country in which the GSMA Development Fund is introducing mobile connectivity into refugee camps and settlements in the north of the country, supported by the UNHCR.

“Two new base stations, provided by Zain and Ericsson, have been launched. The stations are complimented by two internet cafes and numerous “Village Phone” entrepreneurs,” Haig-Thomas says.

The project will be monitored closely and will be used to guide and shape further replication in other refugee locations worldwide.

“Initial results have been positive: the internet cafés are well attended and there is a constant crowd in line to get in,” Haig-Thomas says.

“The service is not free. Our work is not about charity. Instead, we want to stimulate social development by way of catalyzing local market forces.”

Haig-Thomas refers to what she calls the “poverty penalty” – when extremely poor people end up paying more than those with money.

“We soon realized that moving the mobile broadband connection to the village made the service a lot cheaper for the locals, as they wouldn’t need to pay for bus fares on top of the services,” she says.

“We spoke to refugees in Uganda, people with very little money who would save up and pay USD 7 for a bus ride to town, pay USD 5 for one hour of internet access, and another USD 7 to go home. This is the poverty penalty we are working to remove, by bringing services into remote communities.”

Another successful fund project was the introduction of Shared Access to Voice: local entrepreneurs share GSM telecommunication devices within a community, and charge a minimal fee for the service.

“The mobile industry is instigating significant positive social change,” Haig-Thomas says. “Mobile phones have altered society on both a micro and macro-economic level. Research shows that where the number of mobile phone users increases by 10 percent in a developing country, the GDP increases by 1.2 percent. Not many industries can claim a similar result.”

Katarina Ahlfort