The Director Handset Affordability will lead a project focused on improving affordability and ownership of internet-enabled handsets for women so that they can use them to help meet their needs and support their livelihoods. Specifically they will lead a team to support mobile operators and others in the mobile ecosystem with developing and implementing approaches to increase handset ownership and use at scale across primarily Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa, particularly women. Such support includes developing thought leadership, providing strategic advisory support, inputting into the design and scaling of handset affordability approaches and business models, building capacity and engagement of partners through workshops and other means, and monitoring impact.

Key roles and responsibilities include:

• Develop and execute a strategy to accelerate handset ownership and use, especially of women, across primarily Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa.
• Together with colleagues in the Digital Inclusion team, create a pipeline of mobile operators and other partners committed to work with us on the design, implementation and scaling of handset ownership initiatives which include a focus on women.
• Lead action-oriented research to fill key knowledge gaps related to women’s access to handset-financing, reducing handset costs, improving willingness to pay and mitigating risks to the continued use of handsets.
• Lead the development or updating of new or existing materials (e.g. toolkit, workshops, case studies) to implement, test or advise on handset ownership initiatives based on existing and new knowledge.
• Broker partnerships between different players in the mobile ecosystem that will help advance handset ownership.
• Lead the development of a dissemination strategy of the insights and learnings on successful approaches to increasing handset ownership to drive replication and scale.
• Collaborating effectively across the GSMA at global and regional level. This includes working closely with other M4D teams.
• Managing a team to deliver the above.

About You

• The right candidate will be able to develop and deliver a the overall strategy for the project, manage a team and drive impact, ensuring activities are delivered to time, quality and budget. You will have strong experience and understanding of how to drive digital inclusion or underserved populations in low-and middle-income countries at scale.
• This will include both very strong commercial experience and solid knowledge and understanding of approaches to increasing handset affordability with a gender lens.
• You will be excited to join a diverse team that shares a passion for the ways mobile technology can empower underserved populations in low- and middle-income countries, especially women.  
• You must have the right to work in the UK.