Use Viamo to:

Make your content available to everyone within a country, on-demand, and for free. Subscribers can access your information by dialing a toll-free short-code (e.g. 321) and then easily navigating a menu of topic options (for health press 1, for agriculture press 2, etc.)

Your content is validated by local experts, national governments and field tests. People hear your messages in local languages, recorded by native speakers.

Through our Interactive Voice Response (IVR) channel, the audio versions of the messages are available even to people with limited literacy and the most basic phones.

Reach millions of subscribers, and track their day-to-day interaction with your valuable information through real-time dashboards.

Benefit from telecom partners who advertise your content to their subscribers.

The process is as simple as 3‑2‑1:

  1. We will convene a content development workshop with qualified relevant local experts to draft and/or validate your content.
  2. The content will be approved by the relevant government ministry, translated, recorded and field tested.
  3. After revisions are made, the content will be posted on the national 3‑2‑1 Service and the telecoms partner will advertise its existence to their subscribers.

The 3‑2‑1 Service is sustainable because it generates revenue for the telecom partners through customer loyalty, higher average revenues per user, and the positive image associated with the company. These benefits more than offset the ongoing operational costs.

Telecom partnerships for the 3-2-1 Service

New partnerships are being pursued around the world.

3-2-1 Country List

List of countries where the 3-2-1 Service is operational, by region.

Proven impact

The GSMA investigated closely the 3‑2‑1 Service and found that it had a significant impact on listener’s knowledge, attitudes and behaviors. This is understandable because unlike traditional ‘push’ campaigns, callers access the 3‑2‑1 Service content at their moment of need.

Scaled impact

From launch, your content is available on a national scale. You are not limited to the presence of your field staff, or the reach of a radio station. You are not limited by people’s literacy, by their language, by their financial resources, or by their means of transportation. In fact, mobile phones are now the most prevalent communication channel in the world.

Sustained impact

The 3‑2‑1 Service is not a campaign with a 4-week lifespan. It’s a new business model for promoting socially impactful content to millions of people. Telecom partners make this life-changing information available for free (worth millions of dollars of airtime) in exchange for a subscriber base that is more engaged and loyal.

Cell phone envy
3‑2‑1 Service builds customer loyalty for our telecom partners
Photo: Stefano Ravalli (CC BY-SA 2.0)
Modern Farmer
Provide crop market prices to farmers
Photo: michael_swan (CC BY 2.0)
Taking a Break
Track how people interact with your life-enhancing information
Photo: Brian Evan (CC BY-ND 2.0)

Related Case Studies

Airtel, Malawi: This is information which the simple Malawian would have otherwise gotten after meetings with farming advisors, health advisors or other NGOs who do not visit them frequently. All in all, the 3-2-1 Service is helping to improve lives.

Tione Kafumbu, Marketing Executive

Self Help Africa: What better way to help Ugandan farmers than to teach them to help themselves, and in their mother tongues.

Tony Kisadha, Uganda Director

Alliance Magazine: What has suddenly got 100 times cheaper and 10 times faster? According to a new study by the Center for Global Development and the World Bank, citizen feedback in poor countries. Working with Viamo, they reduced the costs of surveying citizens by more than 95 per cent. As some 75 per cent of the world’s population now has access to a mobile phone, it is easier than ever to gather direct feedback.

Civic solutions: a new era for citizen feedback

GSMA: Stories such as Georgette's remind us of the real people who are using the mobile service and have seen real change in their lives as a result of having more information.

Putting a human face on a mobile service for women: the story of Georgette in Madagascar

Farm Radio, Tanzania: Viamo technology has changed the way we do things. They’ve improved the voice services we have been using which had limitations and lots of technical problems. Using Viamo, we can create surveys and use them easily in programs. They have simplified the way we are working. Our content is much more interactive now.

Kassim Sheghembe

UNDP: The use of voice messaging is particularly promising as it is able to reach populations with low levels of literacy.

3-2-1 Innovation

Chemonics: The 3-2-1 Service's use of interactive voice response technology enables the INGC to better communicate with citizens in these remote areas where the Internet is scarce and literacy is low.

Storm Warnings in Mozambique

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