Tanzania’s leading digital lifestyle company, Tigo has outlined its strategic priorities that are meant to drive the company’s long-term social investment objectives.

Speaking at the GSMA Mobile 360-Africa event held on 26th-28th July 2016 at the Julius Nyerere International Conference Centre in Tanzania’s commercial capital City, Dar es Salaam, Tigo General Manager, Diego Gutierrez outlined the telecom’s core social priorities as financial inclusion and closing the gender gap. Gutierrez was one of the key Tigo Tanzania panelists at the conference alongside Shavkat Berdiev, Tigo Tanzania Chief Commercial Officer (CCO) and Head of Mobile Financial Services, Ruan Swanepoel.

“At Tigo, creating positive change is part of our DNA as we bring the digital lifestyle to our customers and communities”, Gutierrez said adding: “we are close to the communities we work with and strive to deliver positive social impact to the people”.

Talking on Tigo’s contribution to driving financial inclusion in Tanzania, Gutierrez said that through Tigo Pesa, the company has given its customers access to Africa’s first universal mobile money exchange system.

“Cumulatively”, he said, “Tigo Pesa users have earned Tsh. 40.7bn (US$18,397,406) in profit share since the scheme was started in 2014”.

The return to customers is calculated based on Tigo Pesa customers’ average daily balance stored in their mobile wallets and is in line with the Central Bank’s (Bank of Tanzania-BoT) Circular issued in February 2014.

Tigo Tanzania became the first telecom company in the world in 2014 to share profit generated from its mobile money Trust Account in the form of a quarterly distribution to its customers.

M. Gutierrez also reiterated the company’s pioneering role in localizing digital content and offering zero-rated products and services that are meant to transform the lives of its customers.

In a keynote debate entitled, “Creating Opportunities for Local Digital Content”, the General Manager said, “Tigo was the first telecom in Tanzania to introduce free Facebook and affordable Smartphones whose interfaces are fully embedded in Kiswahili, the country’s national language so as to open the doors to our customers to access our products and services in a language they can easily understand”.

Tigo Tanzania Head of Mobile Financial Services, Ruan Swanepoel stressed on leveraging the mobile money ecosystem through a market-driven approach that incorporates all players in the telecom industry.  

Giving an example of interoperability where different mobile money providers can conduct cross-network services, Swanepoel said “through our current educational campaign “Nitigopesa”, customers from across all mobile networks in the country can seamlessly send and receive money to any Tigo customer through its secure and convenient Tigo Pesa service”.

Talking about closing the mobile gender gap, Shavkat Berdiev, Tigo CCO re-affirmed the company’s commitment to supporting women in Tanzania through the provision of mobile phones and supporting income-generating micro-finance schemes that target low-income women in a program dubbed, ‘Connected Women Project’. 

“Tigo has already set the pace in contributing to closing the mobile gender gap by providing 400 mobile phones and training on mobile phone use to needy women in Kilwa and Rufiji Districts in the Coastal Region in Tanzania. This is a deliberate move by our company to open up the barriers to both access and use of mobile phones such as cost, cultural issues and low levels of digital literacy”, Berdiev told the media at the conference.

A research conducted by Tigo and REPOA (a leading research organization in the country) last year showed that cost was the greatest obstacle to obtaining a mobile phone handset. That is why, according to Berdiev, the telecom is championing the empowerment of low-income women who cannot afford the phones, hence enhance digital and financial inclusion.

“Tigo’s drive towards offering cheaper phones and micro-finance loans will not only connect Tanzanian women to the world of digital lifestyle but will also contribute to their economic wellbeing and hence better life” concluded M. Berdiev.