Barriowatch

Lack of a proper real-time responsive emergency system, Immediate risk to a person’s health, property or environment requires urgent intervention to prevent any further damage otherwise many lives will be lost, properties stolen and damaged.

Barriowatch is an online digital platform designed to improve local safety, security and emergency response in a neighborhood. It utilizes both local expert individuals and professional teams who receive alert and notification in real-time based on the geographical location when a nearby person in the neighborhood is in distress.

Barriowatch is designed for communities, linking worldwide emergency respondents into one large network, all communities conversing, addressing issues and helping each other during crisis. Millions of people having emergencies in home and foreign countries will be able to access professional emergency response service without geographical or language barrier.

According to the World Bank statistics, approximately 47% of the African population live with less than $2 per day, making it almost impossible to be well prepared in case of emergencies. Barriowatch aims at tackling the Community-Driven Innovation challenge through its works in the following ways:

• Forming partnerships with government agencies and therefore forming a link between the citizen and the government, creating an inclusive community as everyone will have a say on how the government can help improve the emergency response system in the country.
• Forming partnerships with emergency response teams and agencies. This will include teams operating at different levels and therefore making it possible for our customers to select the right kind of service based on their income level.
• Barriowatch will help inform people in the community about neighborhood safety and security through short messages with tips from the data generated through community emergency queries.

Barriowatch is a public application and therefore everyone will be able to freely provide feedback on any of the services they receive. This way, there will be transparency and responsive feedback from all the institutions partnering with us. 

Initially, Barriowatch intends to start it’s operation in Tanzania covering most of the large cities including Dar es Salaam, Morogoro, Dodoma, and Iringa, eventually the whole country. The next stage involves covering the East African region (Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi). Once our operation is well established in this region, we plan on expanding and covering most of the African continent and therefore impacting the lives of about 1 Billion+ people.

Barriowatch also understands the importance of knowing our customers and providing services that meet their needs. With this in mind, we are planning on performing focus groups which would strengthen the communication between us and our customers, as well as allowing us to understand what their needs are so we can find ways to make their lives easier and safer.

Barriowatch will have a comment and ideas feature on the application where our customers can tell us what they expect from us and how we can improve our services in their area. We intend on taking all their comments seriously and adjusting our services to address their needs.

Barriowatch is an online digital platform designed to improve local safety, security and emergency response in a neighborhood. It utilizes both local expert individuals and professional teams who receive alerts and notifications in real-time when a nearby person in the neighborhood is in distress.

Barriowatch uses GPS location proximity to cut down response time by alerting nearby emergency response teams, identify the exact location where help is needed and the type of emergency. Emergency spots such as high theft area or high accident areas are plotted on a map visible to all to provide insights to the public and the Government in addressing relevant issues and for the neighborhood to be aware of local issues arising and act accordingly. 

Barriowatch provides professional emergency response teams to low income earners by allowing them to pay an affordable subscription on a monthly or yearly basis. With more members on Barriowatch, the overall cost of having an emergency response team 24/7 in the neighborhood becomes relatively cheaper. Barriowatch uses the subscription fees to make payment to the neighborhood professional emergency response team when they provide services to Barriowatch users. 

Barriowatch is an innovative solution because it introduces a brand new approach to emergency response in Africa and therefore creating a new dimension towards improving the safety and livelihood of everyone. Many lives are lost, properties stolen and damaged due to lack of a proper real-time responsive emergency system. Since most individuals in a developing country have low income, it is practically impossible to acquire services from a private emergency response team to provide you with 24/7 support when needed. Thus, when an emergency occurs, it is left to the victim to care for and survive the situation.

As a child growing up in a developing country, I have witnessed a lot of people including my neighbors and friends lose their houses to fire accidents as a result of late/poor communication and delayed assistance from the fire department. Barriowatch plans on changing that. We aim to close this gap between people and emergency services by providing a platform which will be closely monitored. This idea was also inspired by the “911” phone service in the US. We have seen how fast, reliable and prepared they are and we would like to give a similar option to people in African communities.

Barriowatch capitalizes on existing technology. The application can be accessed via Android and iOS, the two most common, widely spread operating systems. Database is backed with world’s most comprehensive and broadly adopted cloud platform, Amazon Web Service.

Despite the use of existing technology, Barriowatch introduces a new business model, a simple approach of tagging a profile to a particular community combining with GPS, to allow that particular user to get instant notifications and alerts when something is happening in his/her neighborhood, also to alert in real-time if danger is coming up ahead. The same approach helps to triangulate and get emergency services to a user when there is a distress call.

One of the biggest issues facing developing countries is the lack of proper transportation systems to emergency centers which is a result of poor preparation and planning. Some other reasons include poor vehicle maintenance, lack of a system to coordinate transportation and unavailability of well trained drivers, especially in the rural areas. According to D-tree International - an organization that utilizes technology to help improve health systems in Eastern and Southern Africa, the maternal mortality rate is estimated to be 454 per 100,000  births which is mainly due to lack of proper transportation to healthcare providers. D-tree international estimates that, with the use of mobile technology and having a proper system put in place, these numbers can be reduced by more than 70%. 

Barriowatch aims at addressing not only health issues but also other emergencies like fire accidents, natural disasters, motor vehicle accidents and personal safety. We believe that the inclusion of mobile technology as well as forming strong partnerships with Emergency Service Providers (ESPs) would help improve the standard of living for everyone. Once our system is operational, we intend on having emergency vehicles as well as trained professionals (drivers, healthcare practitioners, security teams) ready to go at any time. The Barriowatch team believes that our solution will help support communities to participate in designing solutions that best meet their needs through our focus groups and comments section as well as advance economic growth due to opportunities that will arise for ESPs as our customer base continues to grow.

Currently, Barriowatch is in it’s prototype stage and therefore we haven’t had a chance to serve any population as of date. The plan is to get things started and rolling by July 2019.

In the coming year, we intend to be well established in Tanzania as well as start providing our services in another East African country. We have projected having at least 100,000 users on our platform by next year alone and up to 1,000,000 registered users in five years duration, as we cover at least six countries in Africa and about 10,000 communities.

In addition to making the streets safe for everyone, Barriowatch intends to transform lives through:

Improved livelihood:  Barriowatch aims to improve the community livelihood by providing real time emergency support to users using GPS proximity to cut down emergency response time and alert nearby partnered emergency response team to provide any required emergency services, creating a safer environment for a community.

Diversified income generation: Partnering with both public and private sector emergency response teams, Barriowatch will increase their income by providing them with potential customers subscribed from the list. Partners will be able to increase their revenue and sales. 

Job Creation: With Barriowatch user base of potential customers growing, more service coverage will be required, thus more man power required for public and private sector dealing with emergency response services. Partners will be inclined to expand their operations by recruiting more emergency response staff.

Application based business ventures in developing countries face many challenges. Here are a few risks and challenges which will be encountered during the implementation of Barriowatch project. 

1. Internet coverage is still a major concern especially in remote areas, currently Barriowatch is an internet based service, which becomes a huge challenge in remote areas where the connectivity is low. 

2. False emergency support claims are bound to happen every now and then. A risk that Barriowatch understands and accept.

3. Professional emergency support coverage, most professional teams are located in urban areas, only local and government emergency support teams are in the rural areas. 

The Barriowatch team has thought of ways to address the above mentioned barriers. The plan to overcome these barriers includes the following:

Internet coverage: Barriowatch intends to eliminate this challenge by using Satellite and USSD (Unstructured Supplementary Service Data) technology. For rural areas where there is poor network connection, users can access the services directly through simple USSD dial on their phones, and in remote areas with no network connection, satellite connected devices designed and developed by Barriowatch will be available to users.

False claims: Barriowatch understands that there will be false emergency support claims. We also know that it is our job to address all requests and therefore, a support team will be sent to any location. If this becomes a huge problem in the future, more serious steps will be put in place with appropriate consequences to the users.

Lack of emergency support teams in rural areas: Barriowatch plans on working and forming partnerships with government agencies in the country. This way, we can work with local and government emergency support teams to provide better service even in rural and remote areas.

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Currently we have a team of five (5) full time members, 

1. Rodgers Kadikilo: Co-founder and President.

2. Robert Kadikilo: Co-founder and Managing Director.

3. Naomi Aphonce: Marketing Consultant.

4. Nicemode Charles: Graphics Designer.

5. Henrick Mruma: Communications Specialist 

Also we have an additional nine (9) part-time staff (young ambassadors) , across four regions Dar es Salaam, Morogoro, Iringa and Dodoma, moving around spreading the word about Barriowatch and how it helps save lives.

We are a team of multi talented young professionals from different backgrounds, each with a specific skill that makes him/her a good fit to the overall dynamics of  Barriowatch. To succeed, a startup needs, an engineer, designer, researcher and business development person. Here is a list of our key personnel and how their specific skills, experiences and backgrounds contributes to the dream team.

Robert Kadikilo,  Engineer, Business Development Person:

Brings International background experience in project management, data analysis,  and software development.

Rodgers Kadikilo,  Engineer, Researcher, Communications Expert:

An innovative and multi-talented professional who has a keen interest in becoming a competent and knowledgeable Engineer, making sure the platform meets world class engineering standards. He also has experience in research and communications.

 Nicemode Charles, Designer, Economist: 

Talented UI, UX, and graphical designer, transforming complex information into simple, easily understandable visual aids. She also has a background in Economics (college minor).

Naomi Alphonce, Researcher: 

With a background in Applied Marketing and Entrepreneurship, she helps the team understand what the users want.

Barriowatch has a total of three partners.

MasterCard Foundation and African Leadership Academy who have been our supporters from the idealization stage to implementation.

CodersInsight, a fast growing technology company in Tanzania, providing a work space for Barriowatch and technical support during the development. 

Barriowatch comes with the solution to improve local safety, security and emergency response in a neighborhood. It utilizes both local expert individuals and professional teams who receive alerts and notifications in real-time when a nearby person in the neighborhood is in distress. Below is a summary of our business model that will determine and plan how Barriowatch can successfully deliver its services to customer

KEY ACTIVITIES

• Barriowatch Application Development
• On boarding Emergency Services Providers
• Expand our outreach, get more users on to the platform.

VALUE PROPOSITION

Value is the best thing that a customer looks for in a product. Barriowatch offers

• Safety and Security Tips
• Emergency Response Teams
• Real time Emergency Alerts 

KEY CUSTOMERS & CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP

Barriowatch aims to establish customer relationships through a 24/7 customer relationship channel to provide support to customers. We also intend to serve anyone in need, regardless of their status or location.

CHANNEL

Barriowatch distribution channel is a chain of business intermediaries through which our services will pass until they reach the final users. That channel will include

• Barriowatch Application
• Barriowatch Website
• Barriowatch Social media Account
• Campaigns and Digital Marketing
• Word of mouth

Barriowatch intends to raise funds from innovation grants and investors in the first year of operation. Later on, after the user base has been well established, the main revenue stream will come from the services offered. 

Revenue generated from users will depend on the type of users and the services they need, a type of freemium revenue model where by the most basic service level is free for all while more sophisticated service levels require users to pay a subscription fee. Here is a short summary of service costs per user.

Product Lines          Sales Price Per Unit (per month)

Health Package         $ 4.00 

Security Package       $ 4.00 

Fire Package             $ 4.00 

Motor Package          $ 4.00

Users will have the option of paying for one or more packages depending on their needs. However, they will also be able to access some information like the list of emergency service providers, high motor vehicle accident areas and other public reports just by downloading our app (for free).

We believe SOLVE can help us reach a wider group of users, forming partnerships with stakeholders and strengthening the emergency services network (Barriowatch) through proper guidance and coaching. 

Creating partnerships with Emergency Service Providers throughout Africa requires a strategic plan and execution. Working with SOLVE will help us overcome pitfalls and technical difficulties that startups usually face during the first few years of operation.  

Also, becoming a SOLVER builds credibility to the platform, making Barriowatch internationally recognized emergency service network that would help ease adaptation to other African communities.

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Barriowatch intends to collaborate with a network of suppliers and partners to facilitate and deliver its services. With this is mind, Barriowatch’s Key Partners can be categorized into three groups. The  Private sector, The Government and Investors/supporters.

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Funding received from Women Prize will be used to promote and create awareness to women on how Barriowatch can be used in times of emergencies. 

Due to lack of proper emergency systems, most women are not well cared for during life- threatening emergencies such as premature rapture of membrane during pregnancy or excessive vaginal bleeding. Barriowatch intends to promote the use of it's app to help women and girls to be able to call for help from professionals who are near by. 

The funds will be used primarily to ensure more women understand the role that Barriowatch plays and how to utilize it's services. 

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Barriowatch uses a new approach, a new business model that connects a profile to a neighborhood, allowing a user to receive emergency alerts and access professional emergency service response when in distress, creating a safer community that cares for one another during emergencies. 

Funding received from Morgridge Family Foundation will be used to promote the usage of Barriowatch. The funds will be used to engage in activities that focuses on targeted groups of stakeholders and communities such on the ground campaigns with our team of ambassadors to get more users on board.

Also part of the funds will be used to promote Barriowatch on different medias such as television, radios and social media to reach out a wider range of communities in different parts of Africa.

Barriowatch uses community safety and security emergency queries to generate reports that show how safe a neighborhood is and the most frequent type of security problem, whether it is a car hijacking or any type of gun violence. The publicly available reports are used to provide insights to the community members and authorities to take action, to make the community a better place.

Funding from the Everytown for Gun Safety Prize will be used to help Barriowatch adopt and implement Big data analytics to help examine and report in real time when something is happening such as gun related violence, this includes the use of predictive models that will alert security personnel nearby that has a better chance of arriving at the scene faster, and tackle the reported incident based on previous supportive track record.