Global Broadband and Innovations (GBI) Program: Support for Program Specific Use of ICTs

This support aims to expand and enhance the creation and delivery of value-added content and services for program initiatives in the areas of health, education and training, agriculture-food security, economic and business development, and government access. Two dominant themes underpinning the GBI Program are increased scalability and replication. The goal is to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of deploying ICT solution sets, enabling USAID to move away from "one-off" ICT solutions deployed at a project level and towards common-shared solutions that can be deployed across multiple projects, by multiple NGOs and contractors. This approach seeks to leverage the potential of ICTs to drive development outcomes and improve the impact of USAID programs. The GBI Program supports programs through several key initiatives. Network-Enabled Applications involve the use of cloud computing, which enables organizations to access selected ICT solution sets through the Internet. This approach lowers costs, reduces start-up time, and provides greater potential for scale sustainability. Mobile Applications take advantage of the exponential growth of mobile networks to deliver development-related content and services. The expansion of mobile networks also provides an opportunity to launch and/or support the establishment of a local, entrepreneurial mobile application development industry. The GBI Program has established a Cooperative Agreement with NetHope, a consortium of international NGOs with supporting U.S. high-tech companies such as Intel, Microsoft, and Cisco. This agreement focuses on developing and placing common-shared applications onto the "cloud" to support USAID's international development programs and projects. Additionally, the program has partnered with Cisco Systems, Inc. to promote their Entrepreneur Institute, which aims to implement 10 Institutes over the next two years. The Entrepreneur Institute works with local public and private sector organizations to promote entrepreneurship for social and economic development.