Covalense at GSMA Mobile 360 - Africa , 2019
Every year each GSMA Mobile 360 Series event cultivates regional engagement through topics that are impacting the mobile industry on both a localized and global scale.
The GSMA Mobile 360 Africa event held at Kigali, Rwanda between 15th to 18th July gathered leaders across Africa’s tech and telecom landscape to share disruptive, provocative, and inspirational ideas contributing to Africa’s digital rise. The event was inaugurated by the Minister of ICT and Innovation, Rwanda. Seshan Krishnamurti, Covalense Director for Africa Region was a part of this event.
The theme “The Rise of the Digital Citizen” represented the extensive penetration of technology in everyday life and in service delivery as well. The GSMA laid strong emphasis on digital inclusion and mobile for development (M4D) across health, education, agriculture and financial sectors with special focus on women in technology, assistive technology and humanitarian support.
Several interesting innovations surfaced, one such was the use of IoT by Yego Moto to create metered rides on two or four-wheelers with the ability to change destinations ad hoc yet be aware of the revised fare. Similarly, the use of iris-based authentication to validate refugee benefits, special-purpose blockchain-based POS terminals were other interesting technology use cases.
Though this was just the second year of an “Africa” focused event, a great degree of interest and commitment was displayed by the Industry, Government, Telcos and Civil society to foster the necessary support structures resulting in an integrated digital society.
