Mobile for Development (M4D)

M4D is intended to serve as a one-stop window for organisations to "go mobile" and help them achieve their development objectives in the areas of health care, rural finance, agriculture, environment and sustainable development, training, and livelihood. The solutions are designed with a holistic approach by integrating technology with a complete value chain system. It works toward creating a sustainable model by partnering closely with organisations and understanding the challenges they face in implementing a technology-based social programme at different project stages: design, development, implementation, and continuation.

M4D starts from the belief that one of the most crucial building blocks for a successful and sustainable mobile technology programme is to forge strong partnerships across multiple sectors and to synchronise them. Thus, M4D evaluates the relationship between all stakeholders, creating strategic ties with multiple sector partners - e.g. mobile operators, device manufacturers, government, private sector, research organisations, and local non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and community-based organisations (CBOs). M4D identifies organisations' needs, studies feasibility, develops solutions, helps in dissemination, trains the communities and trainers, measures success/impact, and assists in scaling the solution at a global level.

The key sectors and their solutions are:

• Healthcare: education and awareness, communication and training of health workers, remote data collection, remote monitoring and surveillance, patient tracking, disease management and outburst monitoring, and diagnostic and treatment support.
• Education and training: m-Learning, educational games and awareness, training the trainers (ToTs), learning management, testing and exams, and infrastructure for mobile optimisation.
• Livelihood solutions: skills development programmes, business exchange solutions, rural enterprise development, and employment exchange.
• Rural finance: microfinance solutions, monetary transaction model, insurance and remittance, client delivery tools, and surveillance tools.
• Agriculture and related information: alerts and communication for farmers, agro-advisory services, services for soil and crop management, market price information, and sales channel and business platforms.
• Sustainable development and environment: education and awareness, training of field workers, disaster management and relief monitoring, weather forecasts and alerts, remote data capturing, location-based surveillance, and global positioning system (GPS) technology.
  

Overview of solutions:

• Awareness and communication: mobile phone games, embedded applications, 1-way short messaging service (SMS), 2-way, interactive SMS response system, and interactive voice response (IVR) systems.
• m-training for field workers: m-Learning platform for field officers (health workers, research scholars, etc.) with back-end monitoring and evaluation system.
• Remote data collection: SMS with a back-end database integration and mobile client-server application for audio, video, and image capture.
• Remote monitoring: SMS alerts, IVR solutions, and client-server monitoring applications and surveillance tools.
• Mobile enterprise solutions: mobile client-server application for care, support, and treatment.
• Payments and transactions: secure m-payment system, mobile client-server transaction solutions, m-banking, and SMS-based voucher validation and scratch-cards.

The M4D brochure [PDF] provides further details.

Technology.

ZMQ states that, "With low-cost handsets and increasing penetration of mobile phone networks globally, millions of people that never had regular access to computers or fixed-line telephones now use mobile devices as daily tools for communication and data transfer. Today, there are 3.5 billion mobile phone users in the world; more than 65% of them are in the developing world." According to ZMQ, in spite of the huge penetration of mobile networks, development programmes frequently suffer from inadequate access in terms of content, applications, solutions, and services. "M4D invites social development organizations to partner in this initiative to implement new programs or scale their existing programs using mobile technology."

ZMQ is a winner of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)'s World Business and Development Award 2008 in recognition of its works in improving lives of the world's most disadvantaged people and efforts aimed at reaching the UN Millennium Development Goals through technology.