Telecoms operators are moving their corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives towards digital education, healthcare and technology-enabled community projects, experts have said.
Reason: Connectivity is being linked more to essential services delivery.
Experts also said MTN Nigeria and Airtel Nigeria CSRs, for example, cover public school teacher training, healthcare facilities’ upgrade ICT labs building and women entrepreneurship.
Also, they said the new industry-backed programme coordinated by the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) is extending free access to some educational platforms.
The initiative provides users about 100MB of free data daily for approved educational websites and platforms.
The commission said the programme is aimed at reducing the costs to digital learning and improving access to education.
At the launch of the programme, NCC Executive Vice Chairman, Aminu Maida, said connectivity is critical to making education programmes effective.
He said: ‘We need to appreciate how critical education is to economic development because of the role of human capital.’
He added that connectivity could help remove barriers to teachers and learning materials.
The programme is expected to cover millions of students.
NCC put the cost of free data provision to five million students at about ?15 billion monthly, or ?180 billion yearly. Maida said the 100MB daily limit was introduced partly to ensure the programme remained sustainable.
The development coincides with an expansion of telecom-backed social programmes.
Alsi, MTN’s SAIL Teachers’ Fellowship trained 5,000 public school teachers in its second cohort, including training in AI-assisted teaching. So far, the programme has trained over 8,700 teachers since its inception, according to MTN Foundation.
The Foundation has also moved into community health and education infrastructure through its What Can We Do Together programme. Its sixth phase attracted 20,983 nominations for public primary healthcare centres and secondary school science labs, with 149 facilities verified.
The Foundation plans to select 40 primary healthcare centres and 15 science labs for intervention under the latest phase.
MTN has also entered the maternal health space deal with the Gates Foundation. The two organisations announced an initial investment of about $25 million in the Nigeria Maternal Health Multiplier, a four-year programme which runs from this year to 2030.
The initiative aims to help 500,000 women access maternal health, equip 5,000 health workers with AI-enabled decision-support tools and improve connectivity at 500 health facilities. It is being implemented alongside Nigeria’s maternal health reforms.
Health Minister Muhammad Ali Pate said the partnership was important because it would work with health systems rather than around them.
‘Partnerships that work with our health systems, rather than around them, are exactly what’s needed,’ Pate added.
Airtel Nigeria has similarly focused part of its recent social investment on education infrastructure. Its School Adoption Programme covers 10 schools in nine states, with interventions including classroom rehabilitation, furniture, water and electricity facilities and ICT labs.
The company has also run Empower Her, a financial-inclusion and business-support programme for women, while its partnership with UNICEF has supported zero-rated access to the Nigeria Learning Passport.
Globacom has also participated in technology-focused community interventions, although its recent publicly visible initiatives have taken a different form. Last year, the company partnered the Federal Ministry of Communications, Innovation and Digital Economy and Huawei on a project providing digital learning, e-health, public Wi-Fi and mobile connectivity to the Ibwa community in Abuja.
The project connected residents to remote learning and healthcare services, with Globacom providing the microwave backhaul and access to its core network, according to the company.
The interventions suggest that telecom CSR is being built around operators’ core assets – connectivity, digital platforms and network infrastructure – rather than being limited to conventional donations.
But the role of telecom companies in public-interest programmes also puts greater emphasis on scale, sustainability and outcomes, particularly where commercial operators are contributing network resources to initiatives with national policy objectives.
The NCC’s zero-rating programme is one such example. Its framework provides for monitoring of platform usage, data consumption, consumer complaints, network performance and compliance, with the commission saying the findings will inform future adjustments to the initiative.
For the telecom sector, the emerging model, therefore, places corporate social investment closer to the country’s wider digital-development agenda, while leaving regulators, operators and other stakeholders to determine how such programmes can remain sustainable and deliver public value.