GSMA Innovation Fund for Digital Urban Services

The GSMA Innovation Fund for Digital Urban Services (“the Fund”) supports innovations to build urban resilience through delivering essential urban services to the underserved in low- and middle-income countries across Africa and Asia. The Fund will provide grants and additional support to small and growing enterprises that leverage digital technology, especially mobile, to deliver services with socio-economic and environmental/climate impact in one of the following verticals:

1. Energy
2. Water
3. Sanitation
4. Plastics and Waste Management

The objective the Fund is to extract insights from business models to inform the improvement of essential urban services delivery across energy, water, sanitation, plastics and waste management. Grants will be utilized to test digital innovations, enable scale, and provide essential services to underserved populations across all four sectors. The grant projects must seek to demonstrate:

• How innovative digital technology, including mobile, can support delivery of urban services to underserved populations;
• What business models and partnerships are required for innovative digital solutions to be adopted at scale;
• What are the social, commercial and environmental/ climate impacts delivering urban services to underserved populations; and
• What role mobile operators and other technology companies can play in these business models, and how they can make their role commercially sustainable.

This initiative has been funded by UK aid from the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO), and is supported by the GSMA and its members.