The below is attributable to Spokesperson Jessica Jennings:
Today, Administrator Samantha Power met with Joakim Reiter, Chief External and Corporate Affairs Officer of Vodafone, and Lisa Felton, Group Director of the Vodafone Foundation, to discuss the joint m-mama partnership between USAID and Vodafone. m-mama is an emergency maternal health transport system that uses mobile technology to connect pregnant women and their newborns to appropriate care.
They reflected on some of the partnership’s milestones over the past year, including the nationwide expansion of m-mama in Tanzania, as well as the plans to bring m-mama to Kenya, which Administrator Power announced in June alongside the Government of Kenya, Vodafone Foundation, Safaricom Plc, and M-PESA Foundation. m-mama has demonstrated both cost-effectiveness and scalability, with over 27,000 transports to date in Tanzania, including over 11,000 this year. The national expansion is on track for completion later this year, and will cover 100 percent of emergency transport needs in rural areas. They also discussed other opportunities to expand the initiative to other countries that would benefit from improvements in emergency maternal health transportation.