It is easy to assume that Africa is a continent of despair, disaster and disarray. But those who live and work there say that there is another story to be told — one of resilience, entrepreneurialism and resourcefulness. Experience shows that out of difficult circumstances can emerge the best kind of innovation — simple yet life-changing for those who embrace it.
One of the most notable recent examples has been Vodafone's launch of the M-Pesa payment system. M-Pesa started out in Kenya, and is a method of transferring cash that bypasses the need for banks and specialist money transfer services. Users register and then receive a Sim card, which features an application that acts as a virtual wallet. They can put money into their M-Pesa account via agents. This can be transferred via mobile phone to another person, who can then withdraw the cash at another agent.
None of this might seem innovative to a reader who is used to electronic banking and instant access to their funds, but M-Pesa was initially designed to help Kenyans overcome the problem of the huge distances some people had to travel to money transfer agencies. Initially it was aimed at workers who had moved to city areas wanting to send money back to family and dependants in rural areas. But the scheme has taken off in ways that Vodafone had not anticipated. Customers have been using the service to pay bills, and employers sometimes pay their staff wages via the system.
Nick Hughes, head of international mobile payment solutions at Vodafone, has been involved in developing M-Pesa since a conference on development issues gave life to the idea of Vodafone using its existing expertise and infrastructure to launch the service. The design has largely been driven by focusing on the needs of customers.
"We deliberately spent a long time talking to individuals about what they wanted," Hughes says. "The technology is easy to use and saves people time and money. It really has caught the imagination."
The service has been extended to Tanzania and Afghanistan, and Vodafone is looking at extending the principle to other applications, such as education and health.
But M-Pesa is by no means a charitable project, with Hughes pointing out that if it weren't a feasible business proposition the company would not be extending it to other markets. In 18 months, four million users have signed up to the service, and 10,000 a day are joining.
Kicking against poverty
Also using Kenya as the starting point for its economic development projects is Kickstart, an NGO founded in 1991. Kickstart has become well known in the country for using innovative designs to help bring, according to its slogan, "the tools to end poverty".
It has had success with a seed oil press, but in the mid 1990s it switched its focus to irrigation — an obvious issue in a continent with vast numbers of subsistence farmers, and a barrier to overcoming poverty. The resulting design, the Money Maker pump, has been a huge success in transforming the lives of farmers who previously relied on rainfall to water their crops. The design is radical because it is cheap, easy to install, can be repaired easily and can even be operated by children.
"Any useful piece of design is an iterative process," says Nick Moon, cofounder of Kickstart. "And not only does the product have to work functionally, but it has to be something that people feel comfortable with on a cultural level."
He gives the example of one design with pedals that were quite high. When this was trialled, users not only felt that it might be somewhat perilous to be so high off the ground, but in one area of Kenya men said that they felt that, when women used it, it made their buttocks move in a way that was unbecoming. The new design used pedals much closer to the ground.
Now Kickstart is finalising the design of a new pump that can help farmers with land lies over water reserves more than seven metres below ground level, which is beyond the reach of the current Money Maker pump.
Mat Hunter, partner at innovation and design consultancy Ideo, thinks other corporations can learn from the experiences of Vodafone and Kickstart in looking far afield for innovation. "We don't know where the best ideas will come from. The ideas are out there, but you've got to believe that ideas don't just exist in the developed world."
It's an opinion that is echoed in Moon's experiences; "The image presented of Africa often enough is one of poverty, corruption, Aids and disaster," he says. "Those things are there, but dig deeper and you find it's a place of enormous energy, optimism and resilience. Europe could learn a lot from that attitude."
Weblinks
M-Pesa: safaricom.co.ke/index
Kickstart: kickstart.org
