Vodacom Helps Keep South Africans Connected to Essential Services

The internet is a vital part of our lives. Enabling us to stay in touch with friends and family and providing access to essential resources such as government services, health information, banking and entertainment.

As technology continues to advance, more and more services are becoming available online. Therefore, it’s important everyone is connected to take full advantage of them.

To support customers in South Africa and drive greater digital inclusion for all, we’ve zero-rated more than 770 institutions and over 1,400 URLs, including government institutions such as the National Department of Health, National Department of Home Affairs and the National Department of Education.

This means that our customers can access these important resources for free, without using any data or airtime.

Collated into a portal called ConnectU, which launched two years ago, we’ve now had more than 43 million visitors, equating to roughly 1.8 million visitors a month.

Offering everything from parenting advice and job opportunities to entertainment and ambulance services, it’s the portal’s education pillar that is proving the most popular so far. With 68,000 unique visitors per month on average, this section is made up of access to universities, colleges, early childhood development centres and Vodacom’s e-School platform.

Helping to address the high level of unemployment in the country – affecting over a third of South Africans – ConnectU also hosts Vodacom’s Get-a-Gig job portal.

Matching a jobseeker to a job or an opportunity within Vodacom and its external partners, Get-a-Gig gives everyone a chance to find a job or a gig opportunity and has a three-year vision of connecting one million youth to jobs or gigs by 2024.

Beyond Africa, our Jobseekers.Connected package offers those looking for work across Europe, Egypt and Turkey, discounted connectivity to help them stay connected while they are searching for a new career opportunity.

In addition, job seekers can visit over 700 curated courses on global e-learning platform Udemy to help people reskill and Vodafone’s Future Jobs Finder tool is also available in every Vodafone market, helping users of all ages and backgrounds to find digital or technology job opportunities and build a CV.

If the past couple of years have taught us anything, it’s how vital connectivity and digital services can be, allowing people to work, learn, stay in touch with loved ones, access healthcare and more.

At Vodafone, we are passionate about getting more people connected, so they can take advantage of the digital world.

ConnectU supports this vision, providing transformative socio-economic development opportunities online at no data cost, and encouraging participation in the digital economy now and into the future.

Source: Vodafone media announcement