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Good practice Imported

MTN Y'ello Care Digital Inclusion Hubs (Mangateen & Gorom)

South Sudan · Juba · See the South Sudan profile

Evidence: Descriptive / self-reported Top 82% 52/100 · Ask Evidence Copilot about this practice

MTN South Sudan's 2025 Y'ello Care campaign built solar 4G hubs in Mangateen IDP camp and Gorom refugee settlement near Juba, giving 2,800+ displaced residents free e-learning, e-health and mobile-money training; the wider campaign reached 40,000+ people in four communities.

2,800+ people
People directly reached by the two hubs (Mangateen and Gorom) (2025)
200 households
Households gaining smartphone access in the first month (2025)
40,000+ people
People reached across the wider four-community campaign (2025)
MTN Y'ello Care Digital Inclusion Hubs (Mangateen & Gorom)

Details

Maturity
Pilot
Promoter
MTN South Sudan
Period
2025-2026
Keywords
telecommunications, humanitarian connectivity, digital literacy, refugee & IDP inclusion

Context

South Sudan hosts hundreds of thousands of internally displaced people and refugees, many in settlements with little or no reliable electricity or internet access, cutting them off from e-learning, e-health services and mobile financial tools.

Objectives

In 2025, MTN South Sudan installed 4G-powered, solar-enabled internet hubs in the Mangateen IDP settlement and the Gorom refugee settlement near Juba, part of its annual '21 Days of Y'ello Care' campaign under the theme 'Connecting at the Roots,' providing free or subsidised access to humanitarian digital services including e-learning, e-health and child-protection platforms, and acting as charging stations where grid power is unreliable.

Activities

Alongside the hubs, MTN distributed subsidised smartphones through a blended model of donated devices and mobile-money-enabled instalment financing (protected by smart device-locking technology), and trained youth and women as community digital facilitators delivering mobile-money, online-safety and digital-literacy training. Refugee youth were also enrolled in the MTN Skills Academy.

Results

MTN reports that the two hubs directly reached over 2,800 refugees and displaced people, with 200 households gaining smartphone access within the first month, while the wider four-community campaign (which also covered Terekeka and Sherikat) reported reaching more than 40,000 residents.

Conclusions

These figures come from MTN's own case study and are echoed by independent African tech press, but no independent, third-party evaluation of learning or economic outcomes has been published, and continuity depends on MTN renewing its annual CSR campaign.

Implementation
Indicative cost
Medium (€50k–€500k) — Corporate CSR investment by MTN South Sudan in solar/4G hub infrastructure, subsidised smartphones (donated devices plus instalment financing) and community facilitator training, as part of the annual Y'ello Care campaign.
Time to results
Short (< 1 year) — Hubs and campaign activity delivered within 2025 as part of the annual '21 Days of Y'ello Care' campaign.
Staffing & skills
MTN South Sudan (implementing telecom operator), Community digital facilitators (youth and women trained by MTN), MTN Skills Academy (enrolling refugee youth)

Conditions for success

  • Solar power removes dependence on unreliable grid electricity in IDP/refugee settlements
  • Blended device-financing model (donated devices plus mobile-money instalment financing with smart device-locking) lowers the smartphone-access barrier
  • Community digital facilitators (youth and women trained locally) support ongoing digital-literacy and mobile-money uptake

Common failure modes

  • No independent, third-party evaluation of learning or economic outcomes has been published
  • Continuity depends on MTN renewing its annual '21 Days of Y'ello Care' CSR campaign rather than being institutionally guaranteed

Where it fits

Governance type
corporate CSR programme (private telecom operator)
Scale
local (two settlements; wider campaign across four communities)
Income level
low-income, humanitarian/displacement context (South Sudan)

Commonly funded by

Own resources / municipal budget

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Data sources

Where this practice's information was retrieved from, and when.

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