Abiri App

Due to lack of digital integration in peri-urban and rural areas in Africa, we provide digital maps in areas Google Maps cannot reach - providing digital presence needed to unlock economic activities and enable mobility of core services such as emergency services, tourism activities as well as business opportunities in these previously disadvantaged settlements. 

In Africa alone there are over 200 million people living in slums according to UN-Habitat Report who do not have access to core services such as ambulances, doctors and health visits, disaster response due to lack of digital maps. Most of their communities are disintegrated from economic activities, hence gross poverty is prevalent in these settlements as many migrate to cities in search of basic services and a better life. Simply because they cannot be located digitally, majority of the Africa population continue to die because of late emergency response or non-response; crime spike as police cannot locate crime scenes and no business or economic activities and unemployment skyrocket due to exclusion from digital world. Falling far behind to achieve UN Sustainable Development Goal No.11: Sustainable cities and communities.   

Abiri App provide digital maps in areas Google Maps cannot reach in Africa, especially peri-urban and rural areas, giving digital presence to previously disadvantaged communities. Abiri App has three objectives:

1. Enabling core services (ambulances, police service response, doctors and health specialists, disaster relief response, etc.) to reach people in remote settlements.

2. Promotes tourism activities in these previously digitally excluded places, encouraging employment in poor communities.

3. Promotes business opportunities and economic activities by giving local businesses the chance to trade online and be able to scale to nearby villages, townships and slums as people can order services and products and get delivery of those digitally.

We use drones equipped with advanced cameras to map these areas then convert these images into digital maps that are easy to use and that locals can interpret to encourage mobility and digital presence of the marginalized population and poor communities.  

With Abiri App we are unlocking peri-urban and rural economy and promote mobility and easy access of core services in remote settlements, further promoting sustainable cities and communities. Our vision is to expand to serve billions of people around the world living in places and communities without digital presence. We educate communities about the importance of digital maps in their areas as we map these places and benefits that come with digital presence. Even before we begin with our mapping process we engage communities members to understand what do they need to appear digitally, how they would like their streets to be named, which roads are commonly used, etc. 

The lack of digital maps in peri-urban and rural areas affects lives which results in many deaths that could be prevented as ambulance are unable to locate houses during emergencies; and during disasters, aid workers are unable to reach casualties, etc. Poverty remains high with unemployment worsening in these communities as local business are unable to scale. Therefore, our digital maps offer a solution that cannot be found in conventional navigation and maps, specifically made with local in mind to promote service and people mobility - the very platform needed to unlock economic activities and these previously disadvantaged settlements. 

We use cheap technologies such as drones to map remote areas and integrate them with cities for seamless travel and easy mobility of services in remote and disadvantaged communities - something that Google Maps, Waze, In-Drive, WeGo are not doing. they are focusing on first world countries and cities. They also use expensive technologies such as satellites to support their maps while we use advanced cameras, drones and software technologies. With our maps, one can travel from cities to rural areas without losing direction and navigation.   

We use high tech drones equipped with advanced cameras that scan and map areas as big as 1 square kilometer at once. These high resolution images are then converted into digital maps through our software development team that uses special program for conversion. 

We have used these drones to map a village called Matshikiri in Mokopane, Limpopo with land size of about 5 square kilometers and successfully converted the images captured into digital maps that are user-friendly. 

Abiri App digital maps will alleviate lack of digital presence in peri-urban and rural settlements, thereby promoting easy mobility of core service to disadvantaged communities, providing digital integration needed to enhance sustainable cities and communities. By mapping these regions and areas and including them on navigation and maps we address the problem of disintegration that led to lack of economic activities and employment in these places. Our mapping process is fast - we can cover an areas of at least 50 square kilometers per day with the image to maps conversion period of about two days. As we map these areas we have witnessed spike in economic activities and we all as easy mobility of core services, where local entrepreneurs from Matshikiri villages we able to scale their products/service to neighbouring communities. This led to local job creation and locatable community members that can call ambulances and have it at their doors within minutes, something that couldn't achieved with conventional maps. Services can now move from cities and towns and be able to reach end-users in remote places, regardless of location. According to Southern African Development Communities (SADC), digital integration of socially disadvantaged communities is one of their agenda - which will unlock peri-urban and rural economic, something that at Abiri Innovations are already undertaking and seeing benefits and impact it has on communities. One local entrepreneur who sells cakes and bread was able to scale to surronding communities because of Abiri App maps, servicing 21 new clients which she now deliver to their doors and these people place order via social media platforms, giving her their house number and she is now able to deliver right at their doors. Because if this she was able to employ four new people to assist with baking and deliveries.   

Currently we are servicing 3500 people gained from an areas size of 5 square kilometers. In one year we will be serving over 10 million people and in the next five years about 100 million people.

Our one year plan is clear, we are planning to map an area size of 200 square kilometers per month, gaining 500 000 users from this initiative. In one year we would have covered an areas size of 2400 square kilometers, gaining over 10 million users. During this period we plan to support and enable over 5000 local businesses to scale and grow because of maps which offer digital presence for growth. Within the next five years we would have(South African Development Communities) covered area size of over 7000 square kilometers, hopefully the entire SADC countries, gaining over 100 million users with about 5 million local businesses and entrepreneurs scaling through our platform.

Our barriers currently available for both one year  and five years include lack of funding to scale to bigger area size, lack of experienced staff to assist in achieving our target goals and drone flight permission from local government to map areas.

1. Lack of funding: we are currently engaging potential investors, sponsors and partners to come on-board in order to accomplish our target goals.

2. Experienced/right staff: we are busy engaging potential staff (graduates, and experienced personnel to join our team. We make it clear from the begin about the kind of people we want and the culture we have in the company to avoid hiring wrong people.

3. Drone flight authorization: we have been granted permission to fly our drones in peri-urban and rural areas for the purpose of regional digital integration, something that will also benefit local government.

We have 5 full-time team and 2 part-time staff.

We are a highly driven with combined experience of 23 years as a company, ranging from Software Development. Our skills ranges from interpersonal skills, problem solving, leadership skills, communication skills and customer service skills. We have been working together for the past four and have development understand of company culture, able to work together on any task and deadline to achieve  target goals. 11 years of Software Development position us as one of the leaders in coding and programming as well as Geographic Information Systems which position us as better connoisseur of Geo-positioning.

Abiri Innovations currently has three partners working with:

1. Mlab Limpopo - currently offering us technology incubation.

2. Southern Africa Innovation Support (SAIS) - on-going innovation support and partnership.

3. Technology Innovation Agency (TIA) - technological and travel support. 

We provide local businesses with digital platform to scale, promote and market their products/services. We have in-app adverts slots where local businesses can place adverts on our maps to be easily located and identifiable. Our advert start from $5 for a monthly advert slots, up to the $20 depending on the places the adverts will appear.  

We will raise money through sustained donations, grants and equity investment or capital investment. In order to break even we will seek grants and donations as well investment capital to bring us to the place where we break even. As soon as we can map an area size of 200 square kilometers, we will gain over 1000  customers; which will enable us to break even and lead us to financial sustainability where we can replicate the process to other areas and communities without requiring external funds or financial support. 

In order to raise funds to scale our solution to many communities in Africa and the entire world. To get potential partners, sponsors and investors to achieve our target goals.

We need partnership and support to further identify more business models from our solution. We feel we can have multiple business model as we scale into many areas. Furthermore, we need assistance in how to raise funds to scale our solution, talent recruiting - especially relevant and capable team that will enable us to scale faster as well as how best to market our solution so that it becomes the product of choice for our customer.

We would like to partner with MIT Institute for Data, Systems and Society; they will help us best manage our data and monetize it from our business models. 

Our solution can be used by refugee to locate places, areas of safety and less hostile places.We will use The Andan Prize to include useful features to support refugee and help them with seamless mobility and easy movement.

We provide a platform that allow users to navigate from cities to remote areas and visa versa, therefore this is crucial in this regard allowing working age people to build skills and locate areas of employment. We will ensure that we improve the solution to offer users with which areas have high employment demands and the skills required for those jobs.