Empowering People
In line with the UN SDGs promise of leaving no one behind, we work to close digital divides, ensuring our customers benefit from digitalization, regardless of who they are or where they live. These efforts have successfully connected millions of Egyptians, providing them with internet connectivity, digital financial services, and more. Our quest to empower Egyptians transcends mere connectivity. Our daily efforts include several transformative projects in education, healthcare, agriculture, among others. Through these initiatives, we continue to equip people with the skills and services necessary to improve their living standards.
Closing the digital divide
Mobile connectivity has transformed into a vital aspect of our daily lives. Being connected in today’s world is essential to remaining up to date on important news, checking in on friends and family, performing most business transactions, booking medical appointments, and many other cornerstones of daily life. Despite this, huge gaps in digital accessibility still exist across Egypt today. A significant proportion of the population does not yet have access to mobile, internet, and digital financial services. Several factors contribute to this ongoing divide. Some remote rural areas suffer from a lack of coverage, limiting access to connectivity for their inhabitants. Additionally, gender gaps in digital connectivity remain prevalent in many areas.
Under this sub-pillar,we have 3 main themes:
Enhancing coverage for all
The first, step in closing the digital divide is ensuring our network coverage reaches all corners of the country. While we recognize and appreciate the significant challenges associated with expanding our network, we remain dedicated to paving the way for change. Through new partnerships and technologies, we have made significant progress over the past year in expanding our infrastructure, delivering reliable connectivity to rural areas. One of our main projects in connecting rural areas is our partnership with Hayah Karima initiative, under the auspices of President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi, which aims to develop Egyptian lives in Rural Egypt through human, infrastructure and economic development.
Providing affordable connectivity, devices and platforms
We have tailored a holistic set of offerings ensuring that smartphone ownership is within reach for most members of the community. In FY 2023, we partnered with Samsung Egypt to introduce a fully Egyptian entry-level 4G smartphone. The Samsung Galaxy A04s is Vodafone Egypt’s solution to an affordable device with cutting-edge technology. Afterwards, we have introduced the A05s in FY 2025. We often pair subsidies and financing programmes made specifically for our low-income communities, helping our customers transition from 2G/3G to 4G handsets.
Another step in ensuring accessibility to digital services is reducing the cost of data, making sure the cost of data is not an obstacle for anyone. In a bid to fight this, we have put in place several initiatives to reduce the cost of data. At a selection of our stores and online, we have introduced discounted contract deals targeting some segments, for example, people with disabilities. We remain vigilant in including accessibility as a key aspect in all our new product and service initiatives.
To ensure that no extra funds are spent without the full knowledge and consent of our customers, we also introduced the MoneyBack Guarantee initiative starting in 2022. This platform enables our customers to review their subscriptions, mobile bundle purchases, and rate plans, to identify and cancel any unwanted subscriptions.
Connecting and empowering women
Access to mobile technology is an essential method to ensure the empowerment of more women in our community. Today, connectivity is a prerequisite to accessing digital financial services, accessing online educational content, searching for employment, and developing skills. Given the essential nature of connectivity for women, and in line with our efforts to continue bridging gender gaps, we have spearheaded several initiatives specifically targeting women across the country.
Empowering Customers
Our customers are at the heart of everything we do. Empowering our customers remains a central aspect of all the products and services we develop and introduce to the market. We proudly offer a holistic range of services tailored to empower our customers both on the individual and enterprise levels.
Driving financial inclusion through digital financial services
As of the end of 2023, Egypt’s financial inclusion rate stood at nearly 71%, a sharp increase from the 33% recorded only 6 years earlier in 2017. This major improvement was in no small part thanks to the rising popularity of e-wallets and Vodafone Egypt’s pioneering role in encouraging their adoption, making them available to users, and developing a varied service offering meeting our consumers’ needs. Vodafone Egypt’s financial services platform, Vodafone Cash (VF Cash), has aligned closely with the Central Bank of Egypt’s (CBE) financial inclusion strategy, furthering financial technology and digital financial infrastructure, by securing a market share of 48%. VF Cash’s encompassing service offering includes money transfers, e-commerce services, insurance, savings, tuition payments, donations, and much more.
Supporting SMEs to thrive in a digital world
Recognizing that small businesses are critical to building prolonged and sustainable economic growth and supporting development, Vodafone Egypt has introduced a fully online resource portal, V-Hub, containing all the tools necessary to help SMEs succeed and join the digital transformation wave. Alongside, our partnership with Shark Tank Egypt sees us provide business owners with insights into digital transformation solutions, equipping them with the digital tools necessary to help them grow in an increasingly competitive environment.
Digitalising larger organisations and critical sectors
By leveraging digital solutions, we are helping organisations streamline operations, cut costs, enhance services, and make data-driven decisions. Digital transformation is a catalyst for growth in the private sector. Vodafone Business partners with organisations to provide tailored digital tools that boost efficiency and productivity.
We operate a fleet management system providing asset visibility and tracking and analysing route and vehicle usage data to reduce fuel consumption and carbon emissions. We partner with several large-scale developers to provide digital home solutions by rolling out triple-play and smart home solutions.
Striking partnerships with the Government of Egypt for digital transformation, through Digitalising Healthcare. The first of these projects is the Universal Health Insurance (UHI) initiative, marking a significant reform in government health insurance. Considered the largest digital transformation project in the Egyptian healthcare sector. The second, Digitalising Egyptian University Hospitals, aims to digitally transform university hospitals with fully integrated systems. Our target is to serve 26 million Citizens by 2030 through Our Digital Healthcare Solutions. Also, we are working on Digitalising Agriculture, by developing an agri-fintech product to enhance farming profitability and reduce the environmental impact associated with farming, supporting farmers across the country.
Supporting Communities
We harness the power of connectivity to positively affect the communities we serve. Both in our everyday interactions with customers through our retail stores and call centres, as well as in our large-scale initiatives, we take into account the needs of all different kinds of customers, setting up protocols, spearheading initiatives, and entering partnerships to ultimately use our platforms to change their lives for the better.
Promoting diversity & inclusion
Through the Egyptian Gender Alliance (EGA), Vodafone Egypt participates in the She Works Wonders programme launched in 2022. The programme aims to train female fresh graduates on skills to equip them for employment in “unconventional” fields.
Improving learning & digital skills
Education is key to all aspects of society. Whether it is to increase employability, develop personal skills, build character, or become digitally literate, quality education is a cornerstone to human development. For this reason, Vodafone Egypt has established two key education initiatives to make quality educational content readily available online for those who need them. In 2013, the Vodafone Foundation and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees set up the Instant Network Schools (INS) to give refugees and host communities access to digital learning content, improving the quality of education and furthering the development of some Africa’s most marginalized communities. A second educational pillar is Vodafone’s Ta3limy platform. The free educational platform offers constantly updated curricula for students. Meanwhile, Ta3limy provides training on positive parenting, cyber security, language and soft skills for parents.
Every year, we conduct a summer training programme, developing university students’ skills, providing hands-on work experience, and building their digital capabilities in the workplace. We also launched Big Data Academy, a six-month programme aiming to provide hands-on data-science experience for fresh graduates.
Supporting those most in need
Connectivity has long been a vital tool for people with disabilities. In their daily lives, accessible technology, specialized tools, and the internet can help support our customers in leading their daily lives. We are committed to helping connect all our customers to technology, providing special deals and tailored offerings for people with disabilities, either 50% discounts or double flex quotas to keep their connections affordable. Meanwhile, deaf and hard of hearing customers are given a dedicated call centre since 2016, with special discounted rates for video calls.
We wholeheartedly encourage our employees to give back to the community as individuals, in addition to our initiatives as an organisation. Every year, hundreds of our employees contribute their time to volunteering activities, increasing their community bonds. To further enable our people, we introduced Yalla Sharek, a digital platform for philanthropy allowing our employees to volunteer with NGOs, educational institutions, and health associations.