Most discussed
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A Weekend with Simon Obwoya, Community Knowledge Worker
Read moreHeather Thorne Matthews is the Director of Information and Communications Technology Innovation at the Grameen Foundation’s Technology Center.
I spent a weekend in early May with Simon Obwoya, one of Grameen Foundation’s Community Knowledge Workers, near Opit, Lalogi Subcounty, about 50km south-east of Gulu in Northern Uganda. Simon is 43, and is married, with 8 children, ranging from 6 months old to 19 years old. He and his family have 3 simple thatch-roof, mud brick huts in close proximity to their neighbours. They have no electricity, but have a bicycle,...
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Going “Down Market” with Financial Products
Read moreAli Ndiwalana is Research Lead, AppLab Money Incubator, at Grameen Foundation Uganda.
As we strive to ensure that everyone has access to financial services – known as “financial inclusion” – by creating products that reach the poor, we can learn a trick or two from the Fast-Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) folks that operate in developing countries. FMCGs are cheap, non-durable, staple goods that sell in large quantities, creating enormous cumulative profit. Examples in Uganda include cooking oil, soap, etc. Though the rhetoric from central banks indicates...
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Building Up a Credit History Outside of Financial Institutions
Read moreAli Ndiwalana is Research Lead, AppLab Money Incubator, at Grameen Foundation Uganda.
Access to capital is cited as a major challenge facing small businesses in rural areas in developing countries. Financial-service providers overlook this segment partly because they lack appropriate information to help gauge risk or investment opportunities available in rural areas. But this information does exist, albeit outside of financial service providers. In this post, we discuss how triangulation of data from different sources may facilitate better risk analysis, and...
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What do Values, Dreams and Sacrifices Mean for Mobile Money Providers and their Product Innovations?
Read moreJulius Matovu is Research and Program Coordinator, AppLab Money Incubator, at Grameen Foundation Uganda.
Let me share a story about a family I visited early this month in Budwale Sub County, Mbale district, on the slopes of Mt. Elgon in Eastern Uganda. The family is headed by Asad Waniale, who lives with his wife, Nandudu, and their son, Faizal. The family depends on small-scale farming for its living, along with a Friesian cow, which is a source of pride for them because it supplements their nutrition and income through the milk it provides.
At the time of...
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From Subsistence Farmer to Commercial Farmer
Read moreBenson Okech is Accountant, at Grameen Foundation Uganda.
When one is traveling to the Rwenzori area, what rings in the mind of the individual are the cascading waterfalls from the peak of Mt. Rwenzori and the presence of several species of wild animals in the national parks in western Uganda. There also are other breaking stories about this area, including a group of poor farmers who are helping others like themselves improve their livelihoods by expanding access to accurate, timely information.
Zangura Ibrahim has been a subsistence farmer for several...
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Many Minds, Shared Vision
Read moreToday, Grameen Foundation’s AppLab website gets a new look and takes on a new approach . The programs are the same – you’ll still see discussions about our Community Knowledge Workers using smartphones to provide vital information to farmers, about mobile technology helping pregnant mothers learn about nutrition and prenatal care, and about services that help poor entrepreneurs earn income by selling airtime through their phones. However, in addition to this new look, we also want to introduce a new approach we’re taking to tackling poverty – open...
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Defining the design problem for financial inclusion
Read moreDr. Olga Morawczynski is Project Manager, AppLab Money Incubator, Grameen Foundation Uganda.
Most pieces on design state a vitally important fact – if you want a good design outcome, you must clearly define the problem behind the search for a solution. However, this is not as easy as it sounds. A well-defined and broadly framed problem allows for the emergence of ideas that push the boundaries of what is possible and opens up the creative spaces from which breakthrough products can emerge. In short, the more widely you cast your net, the more ideas that you...
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Mobile Money Last-Mile Agents
Read moreAli Ndiwalana is Research Lead,AppLab Money Incubator, Grameen Foundation Uganda
Agents are critical for the success of a mobile money (MM) ecosystem; they provide an avenue for cash-in (converting cash into “e-value”) and cash-out transactions. Grameen Foundation’s AppLab Money team has been to many rural villages in our quest to better understand the needs of users, and have often encountered mobile money users, but no agents in the vicinity. When users told us they made regular transactions, we asked how they managed to do this. In many cases, it was via...
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The Cloud for Africa
Read moreLuke Kyohere is Senior Technology Manager, at Grameen Foundation Uganda
Over the past year and a half, Sean Krepp, Grameen Foundation’s Uganda Country Director, and I have been thinking a lot about what we’ve termed “The cloud for Africa”. This has been a central tenet during all our architectural planning over this period: how do we create services that are cloud based and easy to scale horizontally, but also work in Africa where connectivity & coverage are intermittent and energy & money are scarce.
We’ve taken strategic steps to move our services to the...
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Can Trust and Reciprocity Within Social Networks Play a Role in Rural Financial Systems?
Read moreJulius Matovu is Research and Program Coordinator, AppLab Money Incubator, at Grameen Foundation Uganda.
Let me introduce two interesting petty traders based in Owino market – the busiest market in downtown Kampala. They are Akim, a secondhand-shoes trader, and Patrick, a secondhand-clothes dealer.
Last weekend I visited this market for a variety of reasons – including buying some “new” secondhand clothes to revamp my wardrobe. As I wandered through the market I came across these two different petty traders; because each of these individuals had something...
