Business
RapidSMS – an innovation improving the lives of Africans
Before 2011, Nigeria could record only half of the country’s 6 million births per year, says UNICEF on its website, adding, “Without a birth certificate, a child is much less likely to get educated, be vaccinated or receive health services.”
RapidSMS’s built-in feedback loop, which provides quick feedback to health workers, for example, on “the nutritional diagnosis of each child based on the data sent in,” makes it an important tool.
It helps workers to respond to the needs of each child. Pregnant women in Rwanda and children living with HIV in Zambia consider such quick information about their medical needs a great help.
Not long ago, health workers in Nigeria used to manually record birth information such as weight, upper-arm circumference and height, which they then passed on to their headquarters.
There the information was entered manually into a database before it was analyzed. RapidSMS has changed all that, as it provides “access to accurate, timely and actionable information,” says UNICEF.
To reach millions, project managers in the coming years are likely to rely increasingly on mobile phones’ SMS texts.This is because Africa currently has more than 650 million mobile phone users, according to the World Bank. In 1998 the figure was about 2 million.
