Vodafone Group’s charitable arm announced plans to expand a Tanzanian ambulance taxi scheme which relies on its network, app and mobile money platform, into other sub-Saharan African countries at a cost of US$28 million.
The M-Mama programme launched in Tanzania in 2015 and provides free transport for women experiencing complications in pregnancy, labour or with a new born baby.
Those requiring hospital treatment can dial a toll-free number, with a call centre then able to identify and deploy a local taxi driver registered with the ambulance taxi scheme using the M-Mama app.
Drivers are given training in handling emergency patients and paid for the transportation service through m-pesa at no cost to the patient.
Its first new country will be Lesotho, with Vodafone Foundation and the country’s government investing a total of US$4.5 million in expanding the scheme to the nation.
Vodafone Group chief external and corporate affairs officer Joakim Reiter said: “Our long-term investment of US$28 million to expand M-Mama within sub-Saharan Africa will save the lives of thousands of women through an emergency service that governments can afford to sustain.”
Qualcomm Taps Samsung For Snapdragon 4-series
Samsung boosted its foundry business with a win from Qualcomm to produce mobile application processors for low-end 5G smartphones, Yonhap News Agency reported.
The South Korean smartphone and chip vendor was tipped to make 5G versions of Snapdragon 4-series processors, which Qualcomm revealed last week and are scheduled to appear in commercial devices early in 2021.
Yonhap News Agency noted Samsung lags in the foundry sector, citing TrendForce data predicting the vendor would achieve a 17.4 per cent share of the market in the current quarter compared with an anticipated 53.9 per cent for market leader TSMC.
If the report is accurate it would be a big boost for a Samsung strategy to beef-up its System LSI and Foundry businesses. In April 2019, it announced plans to invest KRW133 trillion (US$112 billion) over 11 years in its System LSI and Foundry businesses.
Yonhap News Agency noted Samsung recently lined up orders to produce next-generation processing units for Nvidia and data centre chips for IBM using its 7nm technology.
