Mobile 360 series – Africa

Start: Friday 17 April 2015 12:18 pm

End: Sunday 19 April 2015 12:18 pm

Venue: African Pride Crystal Towers Hotel and Spa

The GSMA Mobile 360 Series – Africa is where mobile leaders collaborate to define the future.  This senior-level conference focuses on opportunities for growth and partnership on key issues related to mobile inclusion in sub-Saharan Africa, bringing together over 400 government representatives, executives and donors involved in digital inclusion and empowerment. This year’s event will also feature the first-ever Jumpstart pitch platform for start-ups.

Join us at our Mobile for Development sessions

Wednesday, 7 October
09:00 – 16:00
Mobile Money Global Event
Join industry leaders and partners to discuss the opportunities for collaboration in developing the mobile money ecosystem. The agenda will focus on interoperability, digitising government payments, the economic impact of mobile money on digital economies, OTC models, and the importance of distribution in mobile insurance.
See the latest agenda here

Wednesday, 7 October
09:00 – 10:30
Balancing Commercial Sustainability and Social Impact: Lessons learned and best practices in launching mHealth services
The GSMA currently tracks over 500 mHealth services in sub-Saharan Africa alone, but few have been able to reach scale. With the support of DFID, the GSMA is working across 8 sub-Saharan countries to support the launch of high potential mHealth services.

A panel session with mobile operators, VAS players, and mHealth implementers will share lessons learned from these initiatives, including their motivations and business case for mHealth, key considerations in designing services for the underserved, and strategies for long term commercial sustainability.
This is an open breakout session, accessible to all registered Mobile 360 Africa attendees.

Wednesday, 7 October
09:00 – 11:30 
Approaches to Local Content Creation: Realising the smartphone opportunity
Mobile for Development Impact and Mozilla formed a partnership in 2014 to explore new approaches to stimulating local content creation in new smartphone markets to test three hypotheses:

i. That a baseline of digital literacy is required for users to embrace the mobile internet, and to begin the journey toward becoming a “content creator”

ii. That through the design of specialized tools and user education programs, it is possible to radically expand the accessibility of content creation

iii. That these interventions can have immediate positive effects for mobile operators in today’s “mobile-first” countries, as well as longer-term digital inclusion benefits.

This breakout session will present the findings from this collaboration, working with participants to understand what the mobile and the development community can contribute towards the challenges of local content creation.
This is an open breakout session, accessible to all registered Mobile 360 Africa attendees.
Download the full agenda

Wednesday, 7 October
11:00 – 13:00
Connectivity During Humanitarian Emergencies: Challenges and new opportunities
Mobile has increasingly been identified as a critical tool for those around the world affected by disaster and humanitarian crisis. What are the existing barriers and solutions in this space and where are the new opportunities for impact? This session will focus on ‘Humanitarian Connectivity’, and will address questions around reaching the last mile, on identity for the displaced and unregistered, and on the growing role of mobile remittance and digital aid. This session will feature experts from each sector in an interactive panel discussion.
This is an open breakout session, accessible to all registered Mobile 360 Africa attendees.

Wednesday, 7 October
14:00 – 18:00
Connected Women Summit. Power of Women: Transforming businesses and lives
Increasing women’s access to and use of mobile can deliver significant socio-economic benefits. We estimate that bridging the gender gap in mobile phone ownership and usage in low- and middle-income countries could unlock an estimated $170 billion market opportunity for the mobile industry by 2020.

The Connected Women Summit will explore how the mobile industry and partners can realize the socio-economic benefits of greater inclusion of women. The conference programme will discuss a range of crucial issues, including how to increase women’s access to mobile phones, enable women’s financial inclusion, enhance digital literacy for women, and address the digital skills gap.
This is an open breakout session, accessible to all registered Mobile 360 Africa attendees.
See the full agenda here

Thursday, 8 October
16:45 – 18:30
Mobile Operators Meet Innovators: How to accelerate winning partnerships 
Mobile operators in emerging markets are uniquely placed to support the delivery of life-enhancing services to underserved communities through win-win partnerships with world class innovators. Yet to date, the number of services that have reached scale has been limited.

What partnership models actually exist and what are the benefits and risks of partnering on new product/service development? This breakout session will discuss this topic in more detail, bringing together speakers from across the region to stimulate discussion on how to accelerate win-win partnerships.
This is an open breakout session, accessible to all registered Mobile 360 Africa attendees.
Download the full agenda

Friday, 9 October
11:45 – 13:45
Unlocking the rural market with user-centric product design
The GSMA mAgri Programme will launch a new toolkit designed for operators and service providers who want to follow a user-centred design process to understand their rural customers and design demand-driven products and services. The discussion will focus on how to unlock the potential of rural market with user-centric product design.

This session will feature presentations from mobile operators and other stakeholders actively working on VAS and mobile financial service solutions for the agricultural sector.
This is an open breakout session, accessible to all registered Mobile 360 Africa attendees.
Download the full agenda

Friday, 9 October
14:30 – 16:00
Launching VAS with Social Impact: Evaluating your service through data analytics
Those launching mobile services in emerging markets targeting underserved customer segments generally report that they wish they could do more with their data to understand, refine and improve delivery of their services. Most report that a lack of frameworks and tools is the primary barrier to achieving this aim.

This short workshop will demonstrate a step-by-step framework and exercises, using real-life examples, to bring to life an approach that can help organisations make better use of their data.
This is an open breakout session, accessible to all registered Mobile 360 Africa attendees.
Download the full agenda


Additional Sessions (Invitation-Only)

Tuesday, 6 October
09:00 – 12:00
Partnering with VAS Vendors
Ninety three percent of MNOs surveyed have a positive view of the value-added services (VAS) that offer socio-economic benefits to users or ‘Mobile for Development’ (M4D) VAS, but 50% cite lack of appropriate vendors as a key barrier to launching them. Despite being the most common content and service providers to mobile network operators, VAS vendors are little understood and highly underleveraged by the M4D community.

Given this lack of understanding, this interactive workshop, in partnership with DAI, aims to articulate why VAS providers are important in the M4D value chain; share the mutual benefits of closer collaboration between the development community and VAS vendors; and offer actionable guidelines to support better working relationships between these groups.
This session is invitation only. For further information please contact: Julia Burchell [email protected]

Tuesday, 6 October
14:00-16:00
How can APIs be used to streamline M4D partnerships?
We know that mobile operators have three main options when developing value-added services (VAS):

1. Build their own
2. Work with VAS vendors or partners to deliver services
3. Open up their APIs to developers directly

A growing number of operators are now opening up some APIs (including SMS, USSD, location services and mobile money) directly to developers. This has the potential to dramatically increase the amount of locally relevant services in emerging markets. This session will focus on what those interested in launching socially impactful services, both within operators and within the development community, can learn from operators that have opened their APIs. This session is invitation only. For further information please contact: Alex Smith [email protected]

Thursday, 8 October
16:00-17:30
Mobile as a vehicle to scale identity for the unregistered
Access to formal proof of identity is a critical cornerstone to social, economic and political development and empowerment, and key to a thriving and diverse digital ecosystem. Yet, there are an estimated 1.8 billion people who lack access to formal ID, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. This invitation-only round-table will provide an informal forum for Mobile Network Operators, international organisations, Government representatives and donors to discuss the opportunities around mobile as a vehicle to scale identity for the unregistered.
This session is invitation only. For more information, please contact Kyla Reid [email protected]

Friday, 9 October
12:00-13:00
UNHCR Roundtable on providing Connectivity for Refugees in Africa
The GSMA is delighted to host representatives from the UN High Commissioner for Refugees who will lead a roundtable discussion on how to address the connectivity needs of the more than 4 million refugees in Africa, as well as some 10 million internally displaced persons, who have left their homes due to human rights abuses and conflict.
This session is invitation only. If you are interested in attending, please contact Nicholas Rossman [email protected].