THE C-PHONE BY T4H

The 2 Billion people of the bottom half of the pyramid experience challenges in accessing basic services such as healthcare, education, jobs and entrepreneurship opportunities, banking, insurance, sports, entertainment, that will help include them in the real economy.

To address these multiple issues in one go, T4H has developed the C-Phone, a Citizen Smartphone, with a set of 16 mobile application, pre-installed in the C-Phone, that provide users access to the above mentioned services in line with the 17 SDGs. The C-Phone also enable collecting data in partnership with the user in order to help redefine public policies in order to readjust the service offerings.

 To reach a global scale, T4H enables disadvantaged populations living in various remote areas of the world to access the basic services via the C-Phone by providing internet/wifi connections via special drone technology co-developed by T4H.

It is estimated that at least 2 Billion people lack proper access to essential services such as food, clean water, educations, proper healthcare, bank account, insurance, entrepreneurship. The question is : Can technology accelerate access to essential services for the most vulnerable populations  ?

T4H believes that it could! But for this to happen the digital inclusion of the most excluded must become a global priority

2020 ITU report shows that huge inequalities remains between countries, gender and social background regarding access to internet (only 33 active mobile broadband for 100 inhabitants in LDCs versus 122 in developed countries or 19% of individuals using the internet in LDCs versus 87 in developed countries. Concerning gender inequalities, 20% of women use the internet in Africa against 37% of men.

These divides are due to multiple factors among which the cost of devices and data, but also the inequalities of skills and uses between individuals are over-determining While the current crisis has shown that dematerialisation can reinforce inequalities rather than correct them (increase in school dropouts, non-access to rights and overexposure to health risks, cost of devices and data), it is more urgent than ever to act to reduce these digital divides

T4H is building a package of solutions offering answers to three main factors of digital exclusion: costs of devices & connection, and capacities to use it as resources for social and economic inclusion.

T4H’s innovative approach consists of launching the C-Phone, an affordable smartphone with various pre-installed mobile applications, developed by T4H or by third parties such as the red-cross.

Thanks to an inclusive design, these applications will facilitate access to healthcare, education, employment, entrepreneurship (especially youth and women empowerment), micro-finance, micro-insurance, sports, civil protection, disasters/pandemic risk information. In order to insure a good user experience, the C-Phone allows access to classic apps of social media, search engines and entertainment.

In addition, the C-Phone will include various solutions to guarantee permanent and quality connectivity (negotiated data rates, drones in remote areas)

The C-Phone is also a vehicle to collect data with users’ permission, with  an incentive scheme to share information. T4H's smart-data helps governments, the UN and NGOs adjust public and development aid policies, but also the private sector to offer right products. Empowering people to provide data on their needs via the C-Phone, while protecting their privacy, is a powerful tool to enhance their own lives.

T4H targets vulnerable populations

(i) who have essential needs that digital technology can help meet, particularly in the areas of health and sports, employment, education and entrepreneurship.

(ii) but for whom the lack of financial means and/or digital skills / motivation hinders access to digital resources.

The share of young people (18 - 35 years old) in the most disadvantaged populations and in emerging countries makes them a privileged target (Cf. NEETs - Not in Education, Employment or Training youth - poor students etc.), especially since they are among those who have the greatest needs in the areas we target (education, entrepreneurship, integration into the job market, sports).

In view of the current inequalities in access to education, employment, entrepreneurship but also to their rights in many of the countries we are targeting, solutions aimed more specifically at empowering women will be developed.

Below is a listing of all digital solutions developed by T4H and partners and how each supports a different section of any given population. It is important to note that the solutions presented below have been designed and developed on the basis of an in-depth knowledge of the issues addressed (see the section "about your team" for the composition and background of the team in charge of the project) and numerous collaborations with associations, NGOs and governments in several countries in the past 5 years.

C-Youth – provides information on possibilities for education, scholarship, professional training, support youth to set up businesses, mentoring, gives a special emphasis in women empowerment.

Sharelook – Les Bons Profs – Coursera: these are 3 different platforms offering various professional trainings, and online support to basic education.

C-Health – Provides information on health issues, gives early warning and guidance on how to act during an epidemic out brake, the user can register to volunteer with the Red Cross in her/his country. It will also integrate telemedicine when for example a user in a remote area of Africa can access live to a doctor that speaks a specific language/dilect of the patient.

Sharethemeal – this application developed by the World Food Program (WFP) is very useful in collecting donations to facilitate poor people access to food. 

Red Cross – in every country where T4H will launch the C-Phone, T4H will also develop the national Red Cross mobile app that will offer various services such as first-aid courses, humanitarian support in times of disasters (using cash coupons), ambulance services, etc...

C-Business – developed in partnership with chambers of commerce, this app will support  small businesses in planning, accounting, banking, financing, insurance, training, tendering, market places...

C-Job – to support job seekers, and also for their trainings on how to write a CV, how to behave  in an interview, etc...

My C – this app is specifically built for data mining. The user establishes a contract with T4H that guarantees the confidentiality of the user’s personal data. The user and T4H will then regularly work to get answering various questions and forms in order to gather information on the real basic needs of people, get their feedback on actual services they can access, all this with the objective of sharing the overall results with various organisations such as the United Nations, African Development Bank, NGOs, and governments, to better define public and development aid policies.

C-Sport and Sportall – these 2 applications will offer various services in sports, as well as trainings on various techniques with small videos, to facilitate social inclusion via sports.

C- Protect – for civil protection for disaster early warnings, information on natural and man-made disasters, for emergency preparedness and response.

C- Inclusion – this portal will facilitate social/economic inclusion via access to banking, micro-finance,  micro-insurance, and helping the un-bankable build a credit score. The portal will offer access to 3 apps: 

-       Tontine: a group savings apps where groups of 6 or 12 people gather to lend each other money on a monthly basis. The apps offers security of a bank to host the transactions, while helping participants to build themselves of Credit Score that can later on help them access traditional bank’s lending services;

-       Ecobank: a Banking app that will help users open a bank account with ECOBANK, mainly in Africa;

-       MoneyGram: this is cash transfer app;

-       Izikare: an insurance app that enable the migrants working in Europe, the USA and other wealthier countries, to be able to purchase an insurance for their families in their home countries.

E-Government – this app will be customized in every country where the C-Phone is launched. This will enable people to safeguard their ID card, Passport, diplomas, Health record, title deeds. It will also facilitate transactions for paying various bills, customs procedures, etc…This apps will offer “safety” of documents important for people’s lives. Millions of people struggle, after conflicts or disasters to recover lost documents, especially women when they have to prove that they were owners of land, businesses, or marriage certificates to inherit.

  All these solutions will be adapted to their deployment context : in order to define the exact nature of services to be offered in each country, in each region of a country, or to each population, T4H will establish in each country an office with mobile applications “content managers” hired locally, that will regularly be in contact with the local populations to get a feedback on their needs, on how comfortable they are to use digital solutions, and on how to enhance access to services. In addition, T4H will work with local tech incubators that already work in many solutions, and that could use the C-Phone to launch their locally developed solutions.

New weapons are needed in the fight against the digital divide, as the pandemic has accelerated the dematerialization of essential services. To prevent those who need it the most from not having access to it (single women with schoolchildren, NEETS, poor students, unbanked populations, young entrepreneurs without professional networks) T4H is developing in 30 countries a unique integrated solution that addresses the main factors of digital exclusion: The C-Phone offers a low-cost quality smartphone, affordable connection solutions including in rural areas (via drones), and an ecosystem of applications aiming at the empowerment of their users through their content and their inclusive design.

T4H designed 8 mobile applications in line with SDGS in collaboration with various organisations. The 8 apps are now in development and ready in October 2021.T4H also partnered with other entities that developed their digital solutions for services such as education, banking, insurance, sports. The T4H apps, as well as third party apps, will be pre-installed in the C-Phone.

The C-Phone, with all apps, will be ready for launch in October 2021 and the first country will be Congo DRC, but also in France in disadvantaged areas where social problems are at the highest resulting of the Covid-19 pandemic. By 2025, the C-Phone will be launched by T4H in 30 countries.

Regarding the C-Phone, there will be 2 versions: ALCATEL 1B and ALCATEL 1SE. These have been already agreed with the manufacturer TCL who provided reduced prices for phones as per their social corporate responsibility program.

The challenge T4H intends to address is to ensure that the bottom half of the pyramid, in Africa, Latin America, and other vulnerable parts of the World, can access basic services in line with the 17 SGDs, using digital technology.

 T4H’s innovative approach consists of launching the C-Phone, an affordable smartphone with various mobile applications (starting with 8 and up to 16 developed by T4H) pre-installed.

These mobile applications, developed in line with the 17 SDGs, will facilitate access to healthcare, education, employment, entrepreneurship (especially for youth and women empowerment), micro-finance, micro-insurance, sports, civil protection, disasters and pandemic risk information.

 Most vulnerable people use pre-paid cards for internet and searching and downloading relevant mobiles applications can be expensive. The C-Phone provides all relevant mobile applications, including third party apps, already customized to services offered in the user’s own country, and own language. This lowers the time and cost of access data to address their various needs. The C-Phone is also an efficient vehicle to collect data on populations, with their permission and a scheme to incentivize them to share information. The data will help governments, the United Nations and NGOs adjust public and development aid policies, but also the private sector to offer the right products to people. T4H will influence the market as it is about taking the Apple, Samsung, Huawei products, and “customize them down” to address every country in line with its own specificities an services to address real needs of its population.

The plan of T4H is to launch the C-Phone the latest in Q4 of 2021 in Congo DRC, in Kenya,  in socially disadvantaged areas of France, and in Kenya. In these 3 countries the target is 650,000 people in one year. Below is a list of countries targeted for the first 3 years and the number of targeted beneficiaries:

 2021 : Country (number of beneficiaries of 5 years)

Congo DRC (7 Million), Senegal (1 Million) , Nigeria (10 Million), Kenya (3 Million), Brazil (5 million), France (300,000)

2022 : Country (number of beneficiaries)

Cote d’Ivoire (2 Million),  Ghana (3 Million), South Africa (3 Million), Mali (1 Million), Niger (1 Million), Burkina Faso (1 Million)

2023 : Country (number of beneficiaries)

Mexico (2 Million), Argentina (500,000), Egypt (2 Million), Colombia (1Million), Rwanda (500,000), Burundi (300,000).

For the years 2024 and 2025

The countries are yet to defined based on lessons learned in 2021-2023 and the political situation within many additional countries in Africa and Latin America.  

T4H offers the C-Phone that has a large set of pre-installed mobile applications. These applications enable to gather data on the feedback from users of essential services offered based on the SDGs indicators. As data gathered is analysed, the service offering is adjusted, and new services are offered. The data mining and analysis will provide also statistics that will be made available to various development organisations and government institutions to redefine public policies. This is a key contribution from T4H to greater positive impact as today the biggest challenge for the implementation of SDGs is the lack of proper and reliable data on the real needs of populations in continents such as Africa and Latin America.

There are for example very little data on how disaster risk could potentially affects the various sectors of the economy in real monetary terms? How much education really empowers women? How much education is affected by malnutrition? What is the real basic understanding by people of the potential impact of climate change? How to adapt to climate change? Often some practices do contribute to climate change adaptation but people are not aware of it. How data can help sustainability is one of the goals of T4H.

T4H intends also to set up 2 to 4 smartphone assembly factories in the African continent in the next 5 years. New employment, skills developped and income generated for the local economies will be measured.

T4H has at the moment 9 staff. It intends to hire 20 more staff by the end of 2021 for marketing, sales, country project management, and general administration.

 In every country where T4H launches its C-Phone, a country office will employ between 8 to 20 national staff.

The T4H vision was designed by Alain Dolium and Hachim Badji, both former leaders (COO & CEO) of various companies and organisations, with a clear positioning of T4H as the driver of "Technology For Humanity". They designed and created over the past 5 years a unique Global Digital Ecosystems for the International Federation of Red Cross, the United Nations (UNICEF and UNDP), International Civil Defense Organisation, Youth Connekt for African governments, but also platforms on behalf of States such as Côte d'Ivoire, Rwanda and Senegal.

Their proposed digital ecosystems aim at improving conditions of vulnerable populations in 30 countries especially in the sectors of health, civil protection, education, employment, sports, etc., in line with SDGs, targeting first Africa and Latin America.

Alain brings a solid and successful track record in the development of digital business models, with a strong focus on big data, while Hachim, as a former International Red Cross and United Nations diplomat, brings a long and high level expertise in national development and impact policies. Other members of the senior staff have long experience on development issues combined to solving them with a business approach.

 T4H will also have an office in each country where the C-Phone is launched to gather “lessons learned” with a staff from the country, that understands realities of the country. The local office will also provide customer support/service, manage and create content in collaboration with local incubators for new solutions to local problems and challenges.

T4H 2 co-founders are from mixed origins from West Indies, Africa and Europe. The team is composed of Africans from Senegal, Congo DRC, from Europe (France and Serbia), from Latin America (Venezuela), and all have lived their youth and have worked in developing countries or in socially disadvantaged areas of European cities. They have all gone through the reality of moving from hardship to building professional careers to reach success, and they are driven by the idea of giving back to the communities. 

The company also uses legal, accounting and financial services of companies that are driven by the idea of supporting initiatives that have a positive social impact, and their contribution is shown by their low pricing of services they provide as their way of supporting T4H achieve its impact goals.

 T4H recruitment process imposes gender parity in its management team, as well as in every country office. In addition, recruiting young professionals is a key objective as for understanding today how to use digital technology efficiently you need to employ those who uses it the most: the youth.

T4H believes that applying to Solve will offer opportunities:

- to raise awareness of T4H and its innovative approach

- to see what others are doing and build synergies

- to offer to other great solutions to be integrated into the C-Phone

- To get a feedback on the relevance of T4H solutions and its approach in rolling them out

- to access to potential investors

- to identify Think Tanks on Impact for future sharing of ideas, lessons learned

Financial

T4H will require financing in order to roll-out the C-Phone in 30 targeted countries in 5 years. In addition, financing will be required to establish phone assembly factories in Africa.

 Branding/Marketing

The C-Phone will need to be known as an important Impact vehicle. This will require support in terms of marketing and promotion using social and global media. T4H will require support from professionals that could help boost knowledge and awareness of the benefits of acquiring the C-Phone. 

 Distribution

Distribution of the C-Phone in various countries will be a key element of the business. T4H will be ready to work with different partners that can provide guidance and support in terms of distribution channels.

Today T4H has built important partnerships with the world most important organisations. However, T4H is looking forward to enhance its partnership portfolio with academic institutions active in finding/innovating in Impact solutions, and institutions that are investing with Impact as a key criteria.

 In order to support its product offerings, T4H’s objective is to regularly engage with various Think Tanks working on Impact related challenges and solutions in order to share its findings based on data collected, but also learn and share with Impact investment funds on where and how investments could best address the needs of vulnerable populations.

T4H will have 3 platforms/apps that will be pre-installed in the C-Phone that will support education: C-Youth, Sharelook, and Les Bons Profs. These apps combined will be able to cover some of the needs of school children, up to adult professional trainings. In addition, the Red Cross and Civil Protection Mobile applications will also provide various types of trainings in health, First Aid, natural disaster risk management, climate change adaptation, etc. These applications combined with the fact that T4H will use drone technology to ensure that remote and most underserved areas will be covered and boost education, positions T4H as a potential strong candidate for the ASA Prize.    

The challenge that T4H intends to address is to ensure that the bottom half of the pyramid, in Africa, Latin America, and other vulnerable parts of the World, can access basic services in line with the United Nations 17 SGDs, using digital technology. T4H’s innovative approach consists of launching the C-Phone, an affordable smartphone with various mobile applications (starting with 8 and up to 16 developed by T4H) pre-installed. These mobile applications, will facilitate access to healthcare, education, employment, entrepreneurship (especially for youth and women empowerment), micro-finance, micro-insurance, sports, civil protection, disasters and pandemic risk information. All these elements addressed by T4H contribute to reduce vulnerability and build more resilient communities.

 The C-Phone provides all relevant mobile applications, including third party apps, already customised to services offered in the user’s own country, and own language. The C-Phone is also an efficient vehicle to collect a wide range of data on populations, with their permission and a scheme to incentivise them to share information. The data helps governments, the United Nations and NGOs adjust public and development aid policies, but also the private sector to offer the right products.

 The solutions and the approach of T4H is quite unique as it covers a very wide array of issues related to the SGD through digital technology accessible to all.