Ericsson, Columbia’s Earth Institute to empower Millennium Villages

Ericsson is partnering with The Earth Institute at Columbia University to provide connectivity to the Millennium Villages project that will bring mobile communication and the Internet to approximately 400,000 people in ten African countries.

The Millennium Villages is a community-led initiative that aims to lift rural African communities out of the extreme poverty that traps hundreds of millions of people throughout the continent. Currently working with 79 villages of approximately 5,000 people per village, the project is tackling challenges related to agriculture, health, education, infrastructure, gender equality, business development and other vital issues. The Millennium Villages project is a partnership between The Earth Institute, Millennium Promise and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).

“The Earth Institute, led by Jeffrey Sachs, has made a dramatic impact on these communities by driving initiatives that have inspired change,” said Carl-Henric Svanberg, President and CEO, Ericsson.

“Providing these developing villages with mobile communications will not only improve basic infrastructure such as healthcare, education and safety, but equally important, will be a foundation for fostering economic growth and development.”

Jeffrey Sachs, who is also Special Advisor to the United Nations Secretary-General, added: “We are pleased to be working with a leader like Ericsson as we continue to make strides in fulfilling the Millennium Development Goals, which aim to reduce extreme poverty and hunger by half while improving education, health, gender equality and sustainability by 2015.

“With more than 3 billion mobile subscribers around the world, the mobile phone plays a key role as one of the most powerful tools to fight poverty, particularly for poor communities in remote areas of the world. Mobile technology will not only facilitate communication beyond borders, but will also be an engine for empowerment and a driving force for economic growth.”

As the dominant telecom supplier in Africa, Ericsson will tap relationships with African operators, including MTN and Zain (formerly known as MTC) and its subsidiary Celtel, in order to develop a comprehensive end-to-end telecommunication strategy in the villages and to drive mobile phone connectivity and coverage build-out to selected areas.

Ericsson will apply its products and solutions to focus on stimulating business opportunities, improving basic needs in the fight against AIDS and malaria, bringing Internet access to schools, boosting agricultural development and providing emergency communications.

Ericsson will also help to bring connectivity to power remote and resource-poor areas through the use of renewable energy technologies, as the company has done in other developing markets like India.

In the first phase of the partnership, Ericsson and Sony Ericsson will supply a number of mobile and fixed wireless phones to the communities in an effort to bring the benefits of connectivity to areas such as agriculture, health, education and infrastructure. Ericsson and Sony Ericsson have also co-developed a solar village charger for mobile phones that will be provided to each village. This new product concept is capable of recharging at least 30 mobile phone batteries per day and eight phones simultaneously for each village.