eCOBBA

Irene Kiwia

Co-Founder

Irene is an accomplished entrepreneur whose career spans over 15 years in Media, Marketing, Communications, Technology and Development programs (focused on women and girl's empowerment). An enthusiastic Women and Youth Empowerment Activist and 2018 Obama Africa Leader. She has also founded Frontline Media Management, Afya Rekod, and Twaa.

Only 15% of Sub Sahara have access to formal financial services. 85% financially excluded from formal financial services use community savings groups to access financial services but there is no data anywhere. The informal sector remains stagnant with minimal growth due to lack of capacity, resources, competitiveness and access to markets.

Capture and centralize members data and activity records in real time. Allow for access to financial services including insurance, access to capital, financial education and create value chain backwards and forward linkages. 

Digitize village community savings and lending processes and collect the right data that can help users create a solid financial foot print. 

The project is set to empower the 85% of Africans in the informal sector who access financial services via community savings groups by digitizing their finances and offering them various financial products and eventually positively impacting their living standards.

The informal sector that drives African economies is off grid and not empowered to become growth enterprises while it provides the opportunity to drive industrialization. This informal sector makes up to 85% of the African population, a number of more than 1 billion people.

The informal sector remains stagnant with minimal growth due to lack of capacity, resources, competitiveness and access to markets. 

Minimal data around savings groups as the majority of the practice is conducted via manual channels of transactions and record keeping. Lack of financial services and products to grow the savings portfolios and limited access to financial education hinders transformation. Uncoordinated efforts towards economic empowerment for the informal sector where they are not investing in competitive productivity.

The main contribution to this problem is the fact that the informal sector is considered a very risky alternative for the mainstream financial institutions. Most of the financial institutions offer services to the 15% of the African population due to their commitment and less risky behaviors. 

eCOBBA is an AI Built FinTech Platform for Africa’s under banked, leveraging community savings and lending groups to drive industrialization.

DIGITIZE COMMUNITIES - It digitize village community savings and lending processes. 

VALUE ADDITION - integrates value addition services and products. Offer micro insurance, digital financial education, pension etc. via partners

VALUE CHAINS - maps economic activities with critical mass and build value chains. 

DATA COLLECTION - collects the right data that can help users create a solid financial foot print. 

INDUSTRIALIZE - launch industries across value chains.  Our mission is to drive industrialization via informal sector in community saving groups. 

The informal sector who make a large percentage of the African continent. They are  the bottom of the pyramid folks that are producing products in agriculture value chains, trading and/or farming. In the absence of formal financial services they use disruptive models like traditional community savings and lending groups to access finances. They access the finances to support their informal businesses which are stagnant in growth due to poor quality and low capacity with no records. These savings groups sustain them but they have not transformed them as groups are as strong as the savings they raise. 

As eCOBBA, we try to understand what the informal sector lacks and why it is very difficult for them to access financial services from mainstream institutions like banks. We also work with small scale farmers and other entrepreneurs to understand their needs.  We then develop our platform based on those variables and therefore addressing our users' needs. It is through data recording and digitizing the savings and lending processes that the platform can be be able to evaluate risks and offer the financial products that the sector otherwise could not access.

Through the digitization of data and leveraging on community savings and lending groups, we can empower the informal sector through driving industrialization and therefore elevating opportunities for all people. 

Industrialization is pivotal to Africa’s long-term development but faced with many reality checks. Governments and key stakeholders have a bold vision and ambitious strategy to truly transform the continent but the mission to facilitate a shift from low to high productivity activities is hit by reality of lack of many critical elements.

The project idea came up after discovering that although the informal sector is responsible for the industrialization in Africa, most of them are not able to access numerous financial products as they are considered too risky. The informal sector is not realizing its true potential and therefore Africa's long term development cannot be fully actualized. 

The people involved include my 2 colleagues - John Kamara and Inonge Imasiku who also posses numerous experience in the field of finance, marketing and technology.  

My dream is to one day elevate the African continent into an independent one, to empower my community and others across the continent and allow them to exercise their full potential and realize their dreams. Through the platform, I aspire that the community experience financial freedom.

This is what motivates me and what allowed me to come up with this project. 

I am an accomplished entrepreneur whose career spans over 15 years in Media, Marketing, Communications, Technology and Development programs (focused on women and girl's empowerment). I am a Woman and Youth Empowerment Activist and 2018 Obama Africa Leader. 

I likewise have experience in startups as I have also founded Frontline Media Management, Afya Rekod (a COVID-19 healthcare response system), and Twaa (a women empowerment and mentor-ship platform).

We have encountered challenges when introducing the idea and trying to scale and gain users in the platform. Most of our users live in the rural areas while some even lack connectivity. However, we continued to reach out, advertise our platform and also introduced USSD capability so that our users can easily access the platform.

My past experience and highlight of my leadership potential include being recognized as the 2018 Obama Africa Leader. 

The platform use Artificial Intelligence that give access to intelligent reports built with AI algorithms to capture relevant variables critical for decision making. The platform is secured with bio-metric integration technology for KYC, Block-chain for security, risk, compliance, hyper ledger, security and trusted API security for peer to peer lending. 

The platform provides relevant products that targets varied needs. Micro lenders, savings schemes and cooperatives to automate their businesses and use data-driven science to lending.

The platform also gives access to micro financial products like savings, loans and insurance, and use data-driven science to enable them to access more products through credit scoring and profiling, grow their ecosystems, expand their products and services and create wealth.

From our research, most of our target users require alternative financial products in order to scale but are not able to access these products in mainstream financial institutions. We therefore created this platform, eCOBBA, in order to offer these services to our users and therefore allowing them to scale in their businesses. As most of our users comprises of the majority (85%) of the African population, the platform will have a tremendous impact in uplifting the economy of our continent. 

Current number - 1000

Number after 1 year - 500,000

Number after 5 years - 10,000,000

Our go to market strategy is to onboard half a million members in 12 months and five million in 72 months. Partner with 1 federation with 3 million members in Tanzania, 3 associations with total 1 million members in Kenya and 2 associations with 500,000 members in Uganda. During the year, we plan on on boarding members for pilots in Tanzania, Kenya and Uganda via savings groups associations.

Ada Labs Limited - Technology support
University/ High learning Institutions (USIU -Kenya) - Capacity building and knowledge
Banking/Finance Institution - To lend into the ecosystem
Insurance Company - To provide micro insurance products

The main products we plan on providing include: Micro Consumer Loans, Micro Business Loans, Peer to Peer Loans, Insurance Products, E-commerce, Customer Referral Services, Direct Marketing Services, Lead Generation Services. While the secondary products include: Customer Referral services, Direct Marketing Services and Lead Generation Services.

This products will be provided on the eCOBBA platform.

Our long term financial sustainability is through the offering of the below products and services

Primary Revenue Model:

Micro Consumer Loans

Micro Business Loans

Peer to Peer Loans

Insurance Products

E-commerce

Customer Referral Services

Direct Marketing Services

Lead Generation Services

Secondary Revenue Model:

Customer Referral services

Direct Marketing Services

Lead Generation Services

All of the above products and services have a small specific fee rate charged to the users when they use them. 

Initial investment of $250,000 (equity) from the shareholders.

To gain funding that will enable the project to scale, mentorship and coaching and build strong partnership within the network. 

Partnering with tech companies for technology development.

Partnering with telecommunication companies for user acquisition. 

Partnering with small and medium enterprises.