SoraAfrica

In West Africa today, there exists an increasing problem of limited and in most cases, unavailable social security for the workers in the informal sector; a significant niche responsible for over half of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of the region; this is the problem we aim to solve.

We are proposing the development of an inclusive model that caters solely to the peculiar needs & benefits of informal sector businesses, as regards pensions, insurance, financing & savings.

SoraAfrica is being designed as a scalable solution for the African community, which ultimately aims to change lives by providing financial stability, support & social security for businesses that constitute the informal sector.

The exclusion of informal sector workers in West Africa from the benefits of social protection, due to nonexistent systems, hostile policies, neglect, and inadequacies is the problem we aim to solve.

According to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the informal sector accounts for approximately 65 percent of economic activities in Nigeria. In Sub-Saharan Africa, which several West African countries duly constitute, the informal sector contributes about 72 percent to employment, excluding agriculture. Majorly, the sector in the continent is driven by women.

Unfavorable policies, corruption, negligence, and inefficient mechanisms/technologies for sustainable contributions are the primary factors advancing the problem in relation to our solution.

Fundamentally, the SoraAfrica solution is being designed and deployed to focus effectively on businesses whose work, by law or practice, are not sufficiently catered for through formal arrangements, hence the informal sector workers. This niche constitutes individuals who do not earn social security for their jobs, both salaried and self-employed.

Significantly, the majority of this sector in the West African region are women. The sector also accounts for a high share of employment in Africa, 55%, as revealed by a recent report.

In a bid to engage these individuals and ascertain their distinctive yet homogenous needs, comprehensive and thorough research, surveys and interviews are regularly being carried out with workers in the informal sector. Food vendors, local transport workers, etc. are engaged as we develop the solution. We kickstart focused conversations, centered around their challenges, expectations, and prospects, an approach towards user-experience.

SoraAfrica aims to establish budding partnerships with already existing communities in the various regions, leverage their direct relationships with the workers, to guarantee and create trust. We would do this while maintaining our promise of delivering a transparent system, providing appealing interests on savings, pension, and insurance plans, a self-service and offline feature considering those with minimal literacy.

The Mission Billion Challenge WURI West Africa Prize provides us an opportunity to address the existing problem of social insecurity, minimal safety, and extreme financial risk faced by workers in the informal sector of West Africa. Our solution, SoraAfrica, presents us with a platform to optimally address the peculiarities of these set of people, by establishing workable technologies. These would facilitate sustained contributions by the workers to social insurance programs and aptly integrate behavioral techniques that aid their financial savings, transparency, and accountability.

SoraAfrica aims to leverage the organizations, associations, and unions currently managing the workers in the sector (where available), and explore the possibilities of structuring & incorporating these groups to represent the SoraAfrica solution adequately.

Amongst the unique offerings of SoraAfrica is that participants of the micro-savings scheme would be offered significant interest rates. This overture is not usually provided by the conventional saving schemes offered to informal sector workers.

Individuals & business owners are also given the prerogative to decide how they would wish to channel or structure their pensions when due, either as liquidable assets or fixed assets.

Loans, financing options, strategic tools/resources & other incentives would be periodically made available to individuals actively operating within our circle, to scale their businesses and facilitate growth.

Individuals are also presented with a transparent system of monitoring their transactions by utilizing our digital platform, which would most often operate on the concept of “mobile money.” Alternatively, our walk-in/physical hubs, which are designed primarily to offer equal value to non-literate individuals & those with minimal or no access to digital devices. These hubs would be operated by our trained agents who are recognized by the workers and already have an existing relationship with them.

Also, we aim to hold firm, our commitment to sharing their business risks in the event of any, provided that such businesses are actively involved in our circle. SoraAfrica poses an all-inclusive ecosystem that would provide these individuals with social protection, in flexible yet functional forms.

Social protection programs have substantially, positively affected, and aided the majority of businesses and individuals operating in the formal sector, providing them relevant assistance and controlled risk effects, in cases of such nature - emergencies, bankruptcy, retirement.

SoraAfrica is expected to run on the existing operational modes of social protection schemes, backing the formal sector such as insurance, pensions & micro-savings. Notwithstanding, it is expected to focus solely on providing these programs for the workers in the informal sector while having additional value-added service and tailoring these offers to suit their unique needs, designing plans that work for them, and duly considering the way they work and live.

A European Union resource material titled “Extending coverage: Social protection and the informal economy” cited a study by Charmes (2016), and it was discovered that the informal economy accounts for 74% of non-agricultural employment in sub-Saharan Africa which includes West Africa. This niche also accounts for more than 65% of the total GDP of the region. It was reached that to successfully address the problem of inadequate social protection for these workers, a unified & encompassing framework must be developed; SoraAfrica answers this.

SoraAfrica aims to stimulate and enable individuals in the informal sector to engage in micro-savings for their future, assets management, insurance & pension. Individuals save an amount, customizable to be done either weekly or monthly, in an integrated financial ecosystem consisting of regulated pension plans, insurance, and micro-savings products, a system that also provides them inciting perks.

With this in place, the chances of workers going broke in the event of job loss or a business collapse are eradicated, hence reducing the rate of vulnerability and the state of unemployment, increasing social transformation, and expediting economic development.

As is with most businesses in the informal sector, the majority of them, which were not protected by a critical social security package as insurance, stand to enjoy insurance benefits from their participation in the SoraAfrica scheme.

Consequently, a stable pension system will manage the risk of this population experiencing poverty after retirement. This would also reduce the risk of financial strain on other members of their household. Hence, we ensure that workers get a reasonable return on their savings; long-term finance is developed, financial stability, support & social security is guaranteed for these businesses that constitute the informal sector.

Strategic & user-focused alliances will be established with governments of West African countries and the organizations/unions currently overseeing the workers, for the SoraAfrica model to be appropriately integrated into those societies. This would result in optimal service delivery to the previously excluded individuals in this regard, and enable them to advance in business, and after retirement with financial literacy, a stable and transparent support system.

We intend to design walk-in/physical hubs, primarily to serve environments with low or minimal connectivity, and users/beneficiaries who are non-literate or possess low numeracy levels, as well as no access to digital devices. The activities of these hubs would be steered by our tutored agents who are familiar with the workers and already have an existing relationship with them.

As an idea still undergoing research and exploration, SoraAfrica currently serves no recipient. However, in one year, we expect to have signed up no less than 300,000 informal sector workers on the SoraAfrica platform.  

In five years, SoraAfrica expects to have gained an active presence in all other West African countries - Benin, Burkina Faso, Guinea, Niger, etc., and have signed up well-over 10,000,000 informal sector workers.

SoraAfrica aims to focus predominantly on building a secure & stable financial future for workers in the informal sector in West African countries.

Within the next year, we will ensure financial stability for at least 100,000 informal sector workers on the SoraAfrica platform by providing them the necessary mechanisms to operate effectively, and one more than 1,000 business scaled, via our support. We also intend to have set up at least ten hubs strategically positioned in unique locations across our initial countries of operation.

Additionally, the SoraAfrica platform would have been initiated and gone live (on web, mobile & USSD platforms) by complete consolidation of the payment solutions through all essential telecommunications service providers & financial institutions.

We also expect to have scaled and strengthened the R&D team, business operations, and client-protection. The pilot for all initial rewards program for savings should have been implemented.

Consequently, we expect to have designed interactive and ingenious physical & digital educational resources to tutor members on the importance of the platform, how to perform essential financial functions such as accessing accounts, executing transactions, saving, accessing insurance, credit, and other products.

A significant barrier would be convincing these individuals to build trust in the platform & embark on long-term savings.

Another barrier would be to manage the mindset of these workers to consider pensions & insurance as essential needs, not just working towards temporary gratification.

Insufficient capital to kickstart the pilot for the platform may also pose a barrier.

Leveraging the relationship of our agents with these individuals would be our primary means of overcoming the barrier of conviction & trust-building, as they are well familiar with them.

Also, we will utilize & remarkably deploy captivating branding tools, mass sensitization, and audio/visual campaign approaches to coach, educate, and sensitize members on the subject of savings, insurance & pensions, and the merits.

Seek for financing/investments from public & private sectors, develop and execute target-driven, resilient & cogent fundraising campaigns.

The team consists of four individuals driven by social impact and united by a common objective of initiating innovative responses to human & global problems, by employing an ambitious & functional approach.

As a hybrid organization, we operate as an idea-driven & design-centered team. We are resolved on driving scalable change, initiating new & sustainable innovations, and creating worthwhile experiences for enterprise, social/non-profit, and governmental sectors, by employing a human-centric approach. We believe in evolving & enhancing the human experience through design.

Our solutions cut across the functional, circular ecosystem and industrial product design, management solutions, architecture & environmental design, visual communications & advertising, leveraging technology, and other creative offerings in the bid to aid inclusion, economic growth & drive sustainable development.

SoraAfrica provides a platform that enables informal sector workers to off their profits, conveniently offer small contributions using a self-service option such as mobile money, or walk-in service. These contributions would be saved & cardinally be in their benefit in cases of need.

We aim to create innovative & simplified, digital & physical components to educate the workers on the importance of the platform, how to perform essential financial functions such as accessing accounts, executing transactions, saving, accessing insurance, credit and other products.

SoraAfrica proposes flexible options & plans in a bid to encourage savings, by providing incentives such as the prerogative to decide how they would wish to channel or structure their funds, such as their pensions.

Our beneficiaries have the option to end their cycle after a stipulated time; this would allow them to use such funds as a recourse for unavoidable circumstances.

SoraAfrica would cater to all workers who are involved in the informal sector regardless of race, profession, income level, etc. In our quest to eliminate exclusion, contributions by members are made at will, without hidden charge or penalty.

For accessibility, widely comprehensible payment systems will be employed and workers will have the flexibility of making their transactions at any time and anywhere (digitally).

SoraAfrica aims to remarkably employ captivating branding tools & audio/visual campaign approaches to coach & sensitize members on the subject of savings, insurance & pensions. Also, incentives such as cost-free policy advisory and consulting services for informal sector workers will be provided.

The SoraAfrica solution is supposed to be maintained on channels such as government and private grants/donations, fundraising campaigns, venture capital, and business finance. Locally and globally, which will be obtained.

SoraAfrica would conveniently move stages from being an idea/proof of concept stage to a tangible product with a grant of $100,000. This would incorporate all costs, such as R&D, fixed fees, certain variable costs, central product development & launch.

We have expectations of raising this grant on or before the end of Q1 2021 (March 2021).

We understand that our participation in the Mission Billion Challenge WURI West Africa Prize provides us a platform to drive the implementation of our SoraAfrica solution. This is in line with our team’s mandate to stir change, initiate new & sustainable interventions, and create substantial innovations to address human & global problems.

We look forward to establishing strategic partnerships with technology companies, such as telecommunications service providers & development companies. These coalitions are aimed at fostering the development of digital products/applications which would be available to beneficiaries in a manner that takes into account their literacy levels and tech-savvy nature. This may include but not limited to simplified frameworks, interfaces, and multilingual forms. At all times, SoraAfrica will work to suitably customize the applications for beneficiaries.

We also intend to maintain and drive a partnership with public & private sector businesses interested in contributing to the capital growth of the informal sector through funding, technical support & communications.