Working with pan-African operator MTN, Ericsson is providing connectivity and telecom services that support healthcare, education and the development of small business to empower social and economic growth. Additional services will be provided during the year.

The milestone follows the recent announcement of Ericsson's partnership with The Earth Institute at Colombia University to provide connectivity to the Millennium Villages project. The initiative will bring mobile communication and internet access to poverty-stricken areas of rural Africa, reaching about 400,000 people in 10 countries.

Jan Embro, president of Ericsson operations in sub-Saharan Africa, says: "The integration of information and communications technology plays a critical role in ending the cycle of poverty, helping people share information and giving them the tools to improve their own social and economic situation."

Villagers will now have the opportunity to access mobile broadband services for the first time, following Ericsson's upgrade of MTN's GSM network with EDGE.

Community health workers will be equipped with tools allowing them to better serve their communities and help save lives. Mobile broadband connectivity and coverage, mobile phones, local services, and applications will make it possible to participate in country-wide health programs.

Initiatives to improve health services include mobile learning tools for training; a new toll-free service that connects patients with on-duty medical personnel in an emergency; and tools to collect health-related data such as patient records and lab test results.

Health clinics and community health workers have been provided mobile phones by Sony Ericsson. Together with Ericsson, Sony Ericsson has developed and will provide new Solar Village Chargers capable of recharging at least 30 mobile-phone batteries a day and eight phones simultaneously for each village cluster.

Ericsson has also developed customized telecommunication services and applications to meet the needs of poor, rural communities and foster economic development. Thanks to a partnership with the GSM Association Development Fund, small business owners will be able to sell shared voice and data services to villagers.

The integration of information and communications technology is crucial to efforts to end the poverty cycle.

Themba Khumalo, CEO of MTN Rwanda, says: "Access to mobile telephony can have vast economic and social impacts for people living in developing countries. The creation of local, sustainable businesses provides a platform for stable economic growth that can greatly help reduce poverty."

About The Millennium Villages project
The Millennium Villages project is a partnership between The Earth Institute, Millennium Promise and the United Nations Development Program. It forms part of the Millennium Development Goals initiative, a global partnership to reduce the extreme poverty that traps hundreds of millions of people throughout Africa.