Exhibition Opening Dates: 12 - 14 Nov 2024,
Cape Town International Convention Centre, Cape Town
Changing Lives Award
This award recognises organisations and initiatives that have made a significant contribution to helping us build a more accessible and inclusive digital world.
DISCOVER THE FINALISTS
Voting is now closed, see below to discover the 2022 finalists!
The winners will be unveiled at the exclusive drinks reception, taking place on Wednesday 9 November from 6-8pm at the CTICC.
SeamlessHR & Special Olympics Nigeria
Codeable initiative
Special Olympics Nigeria, in partnership with SeamlessHR, has launched a new training programme tagged “Codeable” to empower vulnerable young people with technology skills, increasing their access to opportunities that enhance independence.
The partnership which is the first of its kind is set to train over a hundred young people in the next three years, offering internship placements to the best performing students at the end of the program.
Hormuud Telecom
Somalia is on the brink of famine. Since January 2021, one million people have been displaced by drought. Aid has become a lifeline to survival. Yet humanitarian organisations face challenges reaching people migrating from drought-affected areas to Somalia's cities. Only 15% of the population have a bank account and even then, sending individual transfers is a time-intensive process.
However, many IDPs use Hormuud Telecom's EVC Plus. As Somalia's most popular mobile money service, it is free at the point of use and is used by over three-quarters (76%) of the population. Recognising the critical utility of its large customer base, Hormuud developed its humanitarian portal.
The portal provides a traceable, efficient, and timely way to distribute cash assistance via mobile money. With it, humanitarian organisations can distribute $1 million at a time to up to 10,000 beneficiaries with just a click of a button. The service is regulated by the Central Bank of Somalia and complies with international standards. Considering many humanitarian organisations left Somalia during Covid-19, Hormuud is enabling organisations to donate from anywhere in the world, continuing to access and help beneficiaries.
Used by some of Somalia's largest international aid donors, as well as grassroots organisations, the portal is an effective and nimble solution to reach those affected by the drought. EVC Plus runs on both smart and basic cell phones. So, in creating a digitally inclusive platform for humanitarian organisations use, mothers can now purchase food and water to keep their families alive. They can also share aid with their relatives at no cost. Since 2020, the humanitarian portal has seen a surge in donations of 50%, demonstrating its crucial role in providing aid to one of Somalia's most vulnerable populations in their hour of need.
ANSI
ANSI: Smart Villages for rural growth and digital inclusion
The Smart Villages for Rural Growth and Financial Inclusion Project for Niger aims to increase access to cellphone and broadband services in rural areas and to bring digital financial services to selected underserved areas.
Intelsat has partnered with Niger’s Agency for Information Society (ANSI), to implement a pilot of 10 Smart Villages in rural Niger. As a result, 10 villages were equipped with a complete turn-key public Wi-Fi access service via satellite to connect communities where existing communications infrastructure doesn’t reach.
The Republic of Niger is a country with a young population living mostly in rural, remote, and hard-to-reach areas. The lack of coverage is the primary binding constraint that explains why key digital services are not more widely accessed and used in rural Niger.
Extending mobile coverage of mobile networks to people currently unserved (almost ten percent of the Niger population) has a lot of benefits:
- Rural populations will have access to a number of services that are not currently available or not optimally accessible
- Through technology and e-learning, education in rural areas will be improved
This is a project that puts technology at the service of development. The project also involves the expansion of priority digital services in areas such as health, education, agriculture, finance, and commerce.
This is a true example of a public-private partnership to bridge the digital divide.