The history of Viamo
Viamo has expanded to hold a record of 30 active projects with USAID. In the past two years, we have reached 50 million people previously thought to be unreachable, uncounted, and underrepresented. The number of people we’ve reached through the Platform over just the past two years has now reached more than 50 million people.
With the drastic interpersonal cutbacks and global lockdowns under the COVID-19 pandemic, Viamo stood poised to provide USAID partners with digital training, surveys, campaigns and marketing already operational and successful. Under this international constraint, Viamo expanded beyond Africa to Asia, the Middle East and Europe, and to partnerships with the European Union, the UK, the United Nations, World Bank and others. Viamo quickly expanded to offices across 35 countries to serve the growing needs and
Viamo recognized the market’s growing need for more innovative approaches to training – particularly in international development with donors such as USAID. Traditional training or capacity building methods were being conducted in often remote, difficult-to-reach or maintain classroom settings. As a result, Viamo introduced a digital solution to even these seemingly digitally disconnected communities. From co-creation of digital, mobile-optimized curricula through implementation and retention measurements, Viamo released its mobile Digital Training tool. Demand for this
VOTO Mobile (co-founded by Mark Boots, Viamo CTO, and Louis Dorval, Viamo COO) and Human Network International (founded by David McAfee, Viamo CEO) combined to form Viamo. HNI brought Digital Marketing and Digital Campaigns provided on a proprietary platform tool. VOTO brought its tech expertise and two services: Digital Surveys and Digital Campaigns, provided off-platform. When the organizations combined their talents and assets, they expanded their reach to 16 markets in Africa and Asia.
VOTO Mobile integrated with its first telecommunications company, Airtel Ghana. This would become the first of more than 20 major telecommunications company partnerships for Viamo.
The first mobile survey was sent by then-VOTO Mobile in August 2012 in Ghana. It was effectively a failure and a fast lesson learned that then became the company’s strategic pillar. The only ones to respond to the survey in written English directed to people whose voices were unheard and hard to reach were urban men in Ghana. The Digital Survey service has since been offered in the local, native languages by voice across global
