UN to Partner MTN Group and other African Wireless Carriers to Launch a Mobile-Data Platform in the Fight Against the Covid-19 Pandemic

The United Nations is forging a partnership with Africa-focused wireless carriers including MTN Group Ltd. and Orange SA on a mobile-data platform that will help disseminate information on coronavirus around the continent.

According to Vera Songwe, the executive secretary of the UN Economic Commission for Africa,  the service will be free-to-use and can reach half of the African population, or about 600 million people, through their phones.

She said, “If we get this right, it could be rolled out in other areas like Latin America.”

According to Bloomberg Technology Vodacom Group Ltd. and Airtel, Africa Plc make up the quartet of companies putting rivalries to one side to help with the service, which will be available in 23 African countries and called the Africa Communications Intelligence Platform.

The product, which went live in limited territories on Tuesday, distributes tips about Covid-19 to subscribers as well as information about hotspots and the need for food and financial assistance to governments and health teams fighting the virus.

The platform is designed to harness a mix of older technology that works with voice and text messages on basic phones, still popular throughout much of Africa, and broadband that complies with more modern smart devices.

MTN Chief Executive Officer Rob Shuter in a statement said, “We were mindful of the realities faced in African markets where smartphone penetration and internet penetration are low,” adding: “This platform offers services using a combination of text and voice interactions.”

In comparison to other climes in the world, Africa has been less affected by the coronavirus pandemic but the need to get the continent’s economy back working has led to fears of renewed surge of infections. That threatens to overwhelm health-care systems even as the slow spread of the pandemic has bought time to add hospital beds and improve test and trace facilities.

U.N.’s Tunde Fafunwa in an interview said,  “In Africa, the economic impact is now almost greater than the health impact, although we know that infections are still on the increase.”

There also won’t be a problem of breach of privacy laws as there is an assurance that all information and data gathered by the platform will be made anonymous in the first phase.

Fafunwa said, “Personally identifiable information such as mobile numbers will not be passed on from the operator to the government,” adding: “However, we will still be able to identify hot zones through information gathered from features such as the symptom checker, for instance.”