Hawa Bayumi addressing Millennium Village community Health and Education Workers at a handover ceremony where Airtel donated additional 240 simcards to facilitate reach for
services by communities in Mbola Tabora. Looking on, is the Managing Director of The Project Dr. Gerso Nyadzi with other Millennium village staff.
BHARTI Airtel, a leading telecommunications services provider with operations in 20 countries across Asia and Africa, has today affirmed its commitment to helping
achieve the Millennium Development Goals through a partnership with
Ericsson and the Millennium Villages Project.
The Millennium Villages, set up by Millennium Promise and the Earth Institute with the aim of offering an innovative integrated approach to rural development with the aim of achieving the Millennium Development Goals, have received tremendous support from Airtel across Africa.
Airtel has today boosted the Millennium Village in Tanzania’s Tabora region by providing Airtel telecom services and SIM cards to enable the people access healthcare and education with ease. Airtel has also provided toll-free emergency numbers to enable the medical personnel and patients to communicate with ease.
The Millennium Villages are working in partnership with local communities and governments in 10 sub-Saharan Africa countries and are supported by Airtel in six countries within which Airtel operates. In Tanzania, the Millennium Village which was set up in Mbola Cluster in Tabora has now spread out to cover a wider area currently supporting 20 communities spread out over 700 square kilometers with an estimated total population of 30,000 located in Uyui District.
The project’s impact has been far-reaching. So far, more than 500,000 people throughout 11 countries in sub-Saharan Africa have benefited from mobile connectivity and as at the end of 2011, over 90 percent of the village clusters were connected.
Connect to Learn, a collaborative effort between Earth Institute at Columbia University, Ericsson and Bharti Airtel in Africa, was introduced in schools within the Millennium Villages in Ghana, Tanzania, Uganda and Kenya in 2011, reaching some 5,000 students and
teachers.
On his part Sunil Colaso, Airtel Tanzania Managing Director said “Airtels’ commitment is to enrich people lives not only by providing affordable communications services but also reach out to marginalized communities in need of technology to better their lives, which has
resulted to partnering with the Earth Institute and Ericson to support millennium villages.
The partnership goes a long way in achieving the goals set for the Millennium Village Project addressing the challenges of extreme poverty in many overlapping areas such as agriculture, education, health, infrastructure, gender equality, and business development. We are glad to be part of this transformation and commit to serve communities in Tanzania.
Speaking during the expansion ceremony of the project in Mbola village in Tabora, Ms Hawa Bayumi Airtel Tanzania’s Corporate Social Responsibility Manager said “We are happy to reinforce our commitment in providing quality affordable communications to rural Tanzania.
Today we demonstrate that commitment by providing telecom services to 240 personnel in the Millennium Village in order to support the smooth operation of this project. Airtel Tanzania has in addition provided emergency numbers that we believe will improve access to health care, education and emergency services at Mbola village.”
The services offered to the 240 are connected to preferential Close User Group (CUG) rates service to provide free SMS and data services to facilitate communication among Community Health and Education Workers Added Ms. Bayumi.
On their part Margaret Kositany, Head of sustainability and corporate responsibility, Ericsson sub-Saharan Africa said “It’s our belief that, enhanced communications will bring efficiency in our health service interactions and accessibility, improve the online education to general society and improve the e-learning to school children.”
Apart from the Millennium Villages project, Airtel Tanzania is in forefront in offering secondary schools with teaching aids including education books through ‘Shule Yetu’ project. Since the establishment of ‘Shule Yetu’ project more than 900 secondary schools in the country have received scholastic material from Airtel.