Moja Public WiFi

Moja WiFi is a connectivity and monetization platform with the innovative business model that connects people who cannot afford to pay for data bundles to the Internet.

Moja WiFi is rolling out the largest mesh WiFi network in Sub-Saharan Africa in the informal settlement of Mathare Valley in Nairobi.

Targeting the BoP (Bottom of the Pyramid) consumer, Moja sustains the network costs by generating revenue from organizations who pay for digital user engagements through ads, surveys, and other micro tasks.

Users earn Moja points by completing these digital tasks and can spend them to go online. Moja points can also be spent on premium content, goods, and services. The ability for low-income earners to earn and spend Moja points forms a critical layer of economic resilience for the residents and small local businesses in Mathare Valley.

Moja WiFi is solving the problem of 4 billion people worldwide who remain unconnected due to barriers of access, affordability and digital literacy. Most business models bringing connectivity to the last mile and the last meter in Africa makes it prohibitively expensive for the majority of consumers, who earn less than $5 a day,  to maintain perpetual connections.

For the 1 billion people living in informal settlements, Covid-19 disinformation can spread rapidly. Most prevention and awareness information is available digitally thus excluding those who struggle to pay for internet connectivity from accessing this information. Covid-19 has also caused disruptions in learning for school-going children and young adults. 

Our solution strengthens global internet last meter connectivity by increasing the number of internet access points particularly in low-income areas like Mathare using mesh technology, and providing affordable connectivity through Moja Points. 

Users connect to our network, sign on to the Moja platform, earn Moja points and then redeem them for internet sessions. These sessions vary in length and users can always return to the platform to redeem new sessions whenever their current ones expire.

We provide digital education content for learners and fight misinformation and myths around Covid-19 by providing accurate, well sourced health content to users on the Moja platform that is adapted into language and formats locals residents can understand. 

Residents will also receive digital training on how to more effectively use the Internet, which is the largest, greatest, most powerful network of knowledge and information in the world to improve their livelihoods. 

Through Moja Public WiFi, Mathare residents can now participate in network economic activities and benefit from educational, financial, e-government, and other valuable digital services on a regular basis. 

Our solution serves residents of Mathare valley, the oldest and most congested slum in Kenya with 68,941 persons living within a square kilometer in contrast to the national average of 82 persons per square kilometer. 

Because of COVID-19, many people have lost their livelihoods as the nature of their jobs does not afford them the luxury of working from home. School-going children have also fallen behind in their studies due to learning disruptions from school closures and other movement restrictions aimed at preventing the spread of the virus.

Moja WiFi targets any person in the area who has access to an internet-enabled device and provides them with internet access, Covid-19 health information content and learning materials for school-going children and adult learners. Local SMEs and businesses will also benefit through trainings on how to leverage digital access and digital services to improve their business operations, revenues, sustainability, efficiency, competitiveness and profitability. 

We also work with members of various local community-based organizations and youth groups in the Mathare to understand their needs and gain grassroot support for our solution. We have also contracted and and trained 20 Mathare youth as part-time Level 1 field support representatives during site selection and network maintenance. This provides them some income and technical skills that they can use to gain full-time employment.

Our solution aligns with the challenge because Moja WiFi is the first fixed internet service provider to deploy connectivity infrastructure in Mathare. 

We are also the first to provide an affordable and sustainable connectivity model  to serve our target population of unconnected residents allowing them to become active participants and beneficiaries of the digital economy. 

Moja is an established public WiFi provider in Kenya. We have proven our ability to build and grow networks, and we are now in the stage of our growth where we are focusing on commercial sustainability. With Solve funding, we can grow our commercial team’s efforts and platform features for sales and marketing. This will grow our commercial viability and also our ability to sustain the digital inclusion we have conceptualized, prototyped, and piloted. 

Our innovation lies in using mesh technology to improve network coverage and resilience in Mathare by allowing access points to intelligently connect to each other and fail over in case of network issues. The ability for low-income populations to barter for internet sessions using time and attention is easy to scale. It transforms the internet from a luxury that only the middle-class and wealthy can enjoy, into a necessity that’s affordable for all. 

Currently our mesh network is in the early stages of rollout in Mathare, with no advertising or awareness on the ground. Already we are seeing that 3,000 Mathare residents actively use Moja WiFi every month. We expect that to grow to 100,000 monthly active users in one year with the ultimate goal of connecting at least half a million people in Mathare in 5 years.

•  100,000 people in Mathare using Moja WiFi
•  At least 25,000 students accessing Moja’s digital database of educational  content 
•  500 businesses engaged in a digital economic empowerment initiative

20 full-time staff

15 contractors

20 youth group members

Moja WiFi has an internal structure that supports centralized planning by our Global Team and independent operations at a Country level:

• Our CTO manages our Network and Technology team focused on network reliability and user engagement. This comprises our current Network Engineering teams; the NOC; DevoOps; Moja Software; and Moja Platform which includes user experience, customer experience, and relevant content

• Our COO oversees local Field Operations, Production, Supply Chain, Localized Content, and Agent Management

• Our CFO manages the Finance, Administration, HR, Legal, and Partnership Relations teams.

• All commercial partnerships, sales and marketing teams report to the CCO

Installations are done using outside contractors (Fireside) and BRCK’s own field teams. Our team includes mechanical, electrical, and software engineers who can design solutions around the BRCK end-to-end technology stack that seamlessly bridges the cloud to the field.  

Our team has over 3 years of experience getting users online using different technologies.

We are a values-driven organization that puts human beings above human resources. Our team comprises of men and women from over 10 ethnicities and 3 nationalities with key positions in technical and operations teams filled by women. Similarly, young and elderly residents of Mathare who come from diverse ethnic and cultural backgrounds, will have access to and benefit from digital services provided by Moja WiFi.  

We are committed to using the Internet to help equalize and  improve the lives of those underserved by society.

We believe Solve is an incredibly powerful platform to amplify the work we are doing and advocate for more awareness about the importance of digital inclusion.

We have been spending all of our resources on bringing access, affordability, and literacy to the digital inclusivity space. We now need to spend time and money on building strong commercial partnerships that will sustain (and grow) our network. We want to partner with organizations that are interested in engaging digitally with people at the “bottom of the pyramid”. We know they are out there and we know we have the platform to engage with them meaningfully. We hope to grow a healthy pipeline of organizations that have the budgets to pay for this kind of engagement.

• Organizations focused on advocacy interested in engaging digitally with people at the “bottom of the pyramid”
• Social enterprises working in low income markets
• Organizations that produce credible content and demystifies Covid-19 vaccines 
• Education providers providing platforms for learners in marginalized areas, particularly adult education 
• Organizations creating solutions to improve the economic empowerment of people in low-income areas

Data shows that many refugees in Africa live in informal settlements. Mathare is one of the four most commonly mentioned areas in Nairobi that is home to refugees.

Through the Moja platform, migrant communities in Mathare will benefit from the availability of the Internet even as we provide training and information on social ills that affect them  such as gender-based violence protection, and  economic tools like Village Savings and Loans Associations (VSLAs) to help them lead meaningful lives.

Moja WiFi is the onramp to the Internet for emerging markets such as Mathare. Residents not only have access to the Internet, they also receive digital literacy skills to allow them to be productive and responsible digital citizens. We will use the HP prize to help cover costs of maintaining the network.

Moja WiFi solves for digital inclusion in emerging markets through the provision of affordable Internet services and digital literacy skills. Our platform offers a well curated mix of digital education resources for children and young adults to continue learning as well as the internet for further exploration of education content. We have long standing relationship with digital education content providers including digitized local curriculum content partners, TED education, Wikipedia for schools, Khan Academy, E-limu, Ubongo among others.

The use of mesh technology for Public WiFi provides a resilient and automatic failover system that promotes network stability.