Africa has the world’s fastest growing economies and youngest population – nearly all of whom connect with the world via mobile phones. And, through Mxit Reach, more than 1-million users in South Africa access educational, health and counselling services on their mobile phones every month.
Mxit Reach is a registered Public Benefit Organisation established to inspire and improve lives through the development of innovative and cost-effective mobile solutions. “We believe that one of our most important roles is to act as a technology conduit, linking experts such as UNICEF, loveLife, and Childline and their content and services with the people who need it most.
In South Africa, for example, high school learners can access their entire grade 8 to 12 maths, science, physics and biology curricula through Rethink Education, which recently updated its content to include Afrikaans material. Each
month, more than half a million users access education apps, and in 2014 already, more than 60 000 learners have accessed career guidance apps through Brainwave.
Six e-reader apps provide over 1 200 titles and in July 2014, users spent more than 100 000 hours reading on Mxit.
“The enthusiastic uptake of the educational apps speaks to a passionate hunger on the part of our users to improve and enrich their lives,” says Mxit Reach’s head of Education Programmes, Lea-Anne Moses-Magerman.
For many young and expectant mothers, pregnancy, childbirth and motherhood are daunting because they don’t have access to adequate information on pregnancy, birth and parenting. Through Mxit Reach, this year over 50 000 users accessed daily activities on the Groovy Adventurers app, which focuses on the first 1 000 days of a child’s life.
And in 2013, an average of 200 000 women per month used the BabyInfo app to receive daily pregnancy advice messages.
When you live in between thousands of people, it is difficult to make a private costly voice call. Through Mxit Reach’s data-light text-based counselling you now just look like you’re messaging your friend. In 2013, over 600 000 people used counselling services on Mxit Reach. These ranged from trauma counselling to advice on how to get help for substance, physical and sexual abuse.
This upcoming weekend, Mxit is a co-sponsor of TEDx in Cape Town. With this opportunity the brand aims to connect with key decision makers and influencers that can help them develop new and topical mobile solutions that address social issues, and also further the reach of their services to a broader community.
In addition, they will also be hosting the first codeX assessment workshop – a new coding academy that will nurture local programming talent to develop digital solutions for the continent.