Press Releases

MTN Targets 2010 to kick back the frontiers of malaria in Africa

In the biggest legacy drive yet to spread the benefits of the 2010 FIFA World Cup South Africa™ across Africa, MTN today unveiled it will join a bold campaign to dramatically reduce malaria deaths in Africa.

To ensure maximum impact on the ground, MTN has teamed up with a group of leading malaria technical and advocacy groups to help ensure 100% coverage and usage of anti-malaria mosquito bed nets in affected areas by 2010. Achieving the goal of universal mosquito net coverage could save more than four million African lives by 2015.

Together, MTN, the United Nations Foundation, Malaria No More, Roll Back Malaria Partnership, John Hopkins University Center for Communications and PATH will work to step up the fight against Africa’s number one killer of children under the age of five.

Responsible for nearly one million deaths a year in Africa alone (90 percent of them children under five years), the scourge of malaria is now the target of a spirited campaign in which MTN will use the momentum of the 2010 FIFA World Cup South Africa™ to save human lives.

The malaria drive is being launched as part of MTN’s broader “We can’t wait, Let’s go 2010” campaign, in which the first and only African global sponsor of the 2010 FIFA World Cup South Africa™ declares that it can’t wait for everyone to be 100% protected from malaria.

“With the parasite killing more children under the age of five in Africa than any other disease and infecting hundreds of millions more, something as simple as using a mosquito net can ensure that everyone gets to experience the first ever FIFA World Cup in Africa next year,” says MTN Corporate Affairs Group Executive, Ms Nozipho January-Bardill.

“Through its 2010 malaria legacy programme,” explains January-Bardill, “MTN is demonstrating that it is a company with a social conscience.”

“Nearly 100% of the population in MTN’s African markets - among them Ghana, Uganda, Zambia, Cote d’Ivoire and Benin - is directly affected by malaria. For many of the people in these markets, football is their first love.

“What better way to demonstrate our shared commitment to the beautiful game than to use our sponsorship of the 2010 FIFA World Cup South Africa™ to help protect the children of these countries through the provision of malaria education and prevention programmes,” says January-Bardill.

The MTN-supported malaria initiative will be rolled out in countries where people are most at risk of getting malaria, including Ghana, Uganda, Zambia, South Africa, Cote d’Ivoire, Cameroon, Botswana, Swaziland, Congo Brazzaville, Nigeria, Benin, Liberia, Guinea, Guinea Bissau and Rwanda.

For its part, MTN will use its facilities and marketing activities, especially in its 2010 FIFA World Cup South Africa™ outreach, to support awareness, education and mosquito net distribution initiatives in these countries.

Any funds raised in-country as part of an MTN-initiated SMS drive will be re-invested in malaria projects in that country.

“Malaria has long been known to be a treatable disease and financial resources have been mobilised to combat it. But what is often lacking is education and distribution of tools to make 100% coverage a reality. This is what the MTN 2010 Malaria Legacy campaign will seek to address,” concludes Ms January-Bardill.