Najali  Finance  is  an outreach and digital financial concierge platform intended to assist low income consumers across  Africa.Our processes bring financial service providers and users next to each other for a more meaningful relationship.

Essentially, the  platform allows  people with income generating activities in rural communities  to get live  interactions with a  two-way interactive short messaging  service which gets inside details about their economic activities in real time , connect them with the relevant financial services, on board them and monitor the entire value chain of the use of funds in the business up to  the moment their product/service accesses markets.

The service promises to  redefine and organise  the ability of  low income earners,especially farmers,  to access the right financial services  to empower their businesses reach their full potential.

With farmers, the platform promises to fullfill needs of farmers and agribusiness players through technology and outreach , all in one service dubbed I4Ai(Information for action and Impact) to ensure intentional linkage of the farmer to a sustainable value supply chain.

This mobile and outreach platform captures  data about farmers  and builds their profiles to enable them access information on financial services and access to markets for their produce.

It manages the entire end to end  financial access process from sign up to success of the business intended to benefit from the financial service.

On the same platform,the farmers  get   simplified messages on agro science, financial literacy, energy, climate change, business growth, health and a 360 degree insight on what can drive their lives to a better state every season.The platform gives the farmer a more established clarity in the entire agriculture supply chain.

The problem

As an active journalist, the founder of the platform investigated the chaos in the cotton sector, which revealed that despite the fact that farmers engaged in this backbreaking activity for years, their lives not only remained the same but their ability to understand how they could take themselves out of  this hole was non existent.Some of the articles which investigated the agriculture sector using the cotton sector as a case study are here(case study).

Project description

Founded in  2017 by Orton Kiishweko, Najali Finance is a conversational platform focused on fixing  the entire chain that an ordinary African farmer interacts with from relevant agriculture information and inputs, financial services, markets  and accounts. This chain is currently heavily fragmented which makes the farmers’ economic activity less profittable.This has kept the farmers in poverty for ages.To address these challenges, Najali finance relies on tech and outreach to curate these important aspects of the agriculture and financial supply chain and more properly guide the farmer.

Finance

The Najali Finance chatbot platform also  assists rural farmers with information on farming and how to access affordable credit to support their operations .Our platform is a demonstration that chatbots are an effective tool for engaging with  rural farmers access very valuable information to make their economic activities more productive and rewarding.

We are unique in the sense that we currently integrate digital  means to drive financial services usage by acting as the concierge platform through content on available financial services, how they work both in form of news, experiential illustrations (physically, through digital communication)etc .

 As a fully fledged financial services concierge house, we reach rural farmers through digital means and the rural remote people through: i) a call chatbot(named Nefo), ii) SMS communication,.For example, a cheap insurance product(like Jamii(of Micro Health Insurance) or JamiiAfrica may be available, but the potential users do  not understand whether they exist and how they work, a tailor made loan for farmers may be available but not understand how it works etc etc….. iv) news, v)The clip(wassap videos that have illustrations on how various financial products work in different countries, vi)concierge services (through digital bridges) , vii)phone app(to contain all info in Swahili,English,Portuguese and French), viii) SMS chatbot services (that reach out to local people through a database currently under development), ix)podcasts(called SIO RADIO to talk about how various financial products, services work and make them accessible to the most remote 

poor farmer for example.These conversations also seek to change behavior of people towards finances.These series are sent out both digitally but also go to where farmers are and play the podcasts at village gatherings.We ensure they write down what they learn and call our concierge facility x)(whatsap PF 24/7) where they don’t understand), xi)cash is not king project(seeks to encourage banks or mobile money transactions among the slowest sections of the public to understand importance of this), xii)special content targeting access to financial services for refugees, xiii) also tell stories of fin innovations so that future innovators don’t reinvent the wheel(to avoid time wastage or investing in innovations that have already been invested and perfected). Najali Finance seeks to bridge that gap through news, The clip(wassap videos that have illustrations on how various financial products work in Tanzania, concierge services (through digital and non digital bridges) ,phone app(to contain all info in Swahili,English,Portuguese and French),SMS chatbot services (that reach out to local people through a database we are creating),podcasts(called SIO RADIO to talk about how various financial products, services work and make them accessible to the most remote poor farmer for example.These conversations also seek to change behavior of people towards finances.These series are sent out both digitally but also go to where farmers are and play the podcasts at village gatherings.

Theory of change

Our theory of change is founded on the najali principle ,’I care’.Care that is empathetic during the process,from onboarding to impact.Najali is a Swahili term for ‘I care’.

We have done this in 3 African countries and are callibrating the same as we scale.

We  have an aggressive expansion model across the under served in Africa