Ericsson has delivered telecom services to remote villages in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda in a bid to continue its support of the Millennium Villages project. 
 

In collaboration with the Earth Institute and Middle Eastern and African operator Zain and its subsidiary Celtel, Ericsson is providing mobile-phone connectivity in the villages of Dertu, Kenya; Ruhiira, Uganda; Mbola, Tanzania. Ericsson is also providing coverage expansion and telecom services to support healthcare access and education in the selected areas.
 

Carl-Henric Svanberg, CEO and president of Ericsson, says: “The Millennium Village project provides us with a unique ecosystem to demonstrate the benefits of voice and internet. We believe the uptake of mobile services could go even quicker than anticipated in this environment, as the need for even basic services is so much greater. The project is one concrete example where we are realizing our commitment to the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), while at the same time stimulating positive business impacts and opening new markets in remote parts of rural Africa.”
 

In Kenya, Ericsson and Zain have installed a temporary mobile EDGE network, enabling basic voice and data communication for the first time. The first call was made from Dertu on May 7 to Jeffrey Sachs, a special advisor to the United Nations Secretary-General and the Director of Columbia University’s Earth Institute, who was in Nairobi. The permanent solution will be in place in October 2008. Ericsson’s innovative green site solutions, such as solar and wind power, will be used, enabling a low cost and low environmental impact. In addition, new mobile phone applications for health care and for livestock management are being piloted. 
 

For Uganda, initial improvements to network coverage were made and mobile internet has been installed in schools and health centers. Tanzania is also on track for the same services. Ericsson plans to expand the coverage to all of the 73,000 people living in both village clusters.
 

Sony Ericsson has provided health clinics and community-health workers in all three villages with mobile phones. Together with Ericsson, Sony Ericsson will provide solar village chargers, capable of recharging at least 30 mobile-phone batteries per day and eight phones simultaneously for each village cluster.
 

Other initiatives to improve health services include toll-free phone service for use in medical emergencies to connect patients with on-duty medical personnel.
 

Chris Gabriel, CEO of Celtel International, Zain says: “We want to make life better for people across this vast continent. By bringing modern telecommunications to remote villages in Africa, including internet access, we will see how mobile communications can play a key role in helping improve the quality of life for people in some of the least developed parts of the world.”
 

These deliverables follow Ericsson’s signing of the Business Call to Action declaration on May 6 at an event in London hosted by British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and the head administrator of the UN Development Program, Kemal Derviş. The declaration aims to engage the skills and experience of private-sector companies to advance progress towards the MDGs.
 

About The Millennium Villages project: 
The Millennium Villages project is a partnership between the Earth Institute, Millennium Promise and the United Nations Development Program, providing an innovative model to help rural African communities lift themselves out of poverty. The project forms part of the initiative for rural Africa to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) – global targets for reducing extreme poverty by half and improving education, health, gender equality and environmental sustainability by 2015.