Publications

Building successful financial institutions from the bottom up through local communities

Leveraging APIs to enable innovation & promote growth.

This toolkit has been designed to help you generate solutions in many different fields of interest, from agriculture, to manufacturing, to banking and new technology. Throughout we use examples from some industries, but the process is equally applicable across the board. No matter which industry sector you are designing for, the human centered design (HCD) […]

VIDEO: Drivers and barriers of M-Shwari usage among jua kali workers

M-BIMA is Kenya insurance firm CIC’s 12 year endowment product that combines savings with a life and disability cover. Payments and claims are settled through M-PESA. Subscribers send contributions from as low as ksh.20/- per day through their mobile phones at no transaction costs.

SOKO (formerly SasaAfrica), is an e-commerce platform that promotes more equitable and distributed international trade by connecting offline artisans in the developing world to online global consumers. Vendors, with no need for the internet, create personal online storefronts and populate them with product information and images with the use of SOKO’s accessible SMS-based mobile phone […]

Chamasoft is a simple to use web and mobile application which helps investment groups and chamas to manage all their group activities and communications. Chamasoft allows groups to automate and monitor their financial records. It performs the following functions: Membership Management. Bank Account Management Financial Management Loan Management Expense Management Project Management Reports One time […]

ChamaPesa gives savings clubs (chamas) the tools to issue and manage financial instruments which their members can access from their phones, with good governance at low cost. ChamaPesa enable financial inclusion for people at the base of the pyramid. It enables these Chamas to better manage their savings with good governance and transparency for the […]

Zidisha is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization that allows people to lend small amounts of money directly to entrepreneurs in developing countries. It is a peer to peer micro-lending service that links borrowers and lenders worldwide without the inter mediation of a local micro-finance institution. The organization is named after the Kiswahili word zidisha which means “grow” or “expand”. The Zidisha website facilitates […]

Kiva Zip is a pilot program, launched by Kiva.org, to drive innovations in person-to-person lending. It provides 0% interest loans of up to $5,000 for small businesses and entrepreneurs who are financially excluded and under-served. Kiva Zip allows for direct lending at 0% interest to entrepreneurs in Africa and the U.S. by leveraging trust networks & […]