Booster Teams to Breach the Rural Frontier of Digital Financial Services (DFS) in Uganda
January 24th 2020
Over 75 percent of Ugandans are
employed in the agricultural sector – which only accounts for 26 percent of the
nation’s GDP. This demonstrates that poverty in Uganda was, and is, mainly
rural-based. In order to promote meaningful financial inclusion, UNCDF
understood that it needed to directly address the rural population,
particularly farmers and other players in the agricultural value chain.
In the context of rural digital finance, the concept of a “booster team” is a
dedicated team that supports one or several organizations to distribute their
products and services to the last mile population. These products can range
from financial services, energy products, digital and financial literacy
content, or any other service. The booster teams are deployed to rural areas to
simultaneously register customers, sell mobile handsets, recruit agents,
educate value-chain stakeholders on the benefits of a digital payment
ecosystem, and train users on the operation of a mobile phone and mobile money.
The basic structure of a booster team is detailed in the report.
The pilot began in Uganda in 2018 and evolved organically through three main
phases. The first phase involved market identification and preparation that
aimed to locate areas with an economic anchor and prepare those areas for
digital ecosystem growth. The second phase was market storm. In this phase, it
was important to work with community members, both rural actors and agents, to
make sure they understood their role and that customers could grasp the
benefits of a digital ecosystem. The third phase involved the push for
sustainability with the aim to ensure the provider and other partners are
profitably able to continue to reach difficult demographics with appropriate
financial products. This phase helped UNCDF analyse usage data and identify
additional gaps and improve approaches for the hardest-to-reach demographics.
The pilot generated several learnings and insights that are shared in the
report. The first is for all activities of the booster team to be nudged and
not pushed. The team is there to build on existing systems and not fundamentally
redesign infrastructure. For this to work, the provider must be sufficiently
motivated to solve issues that teams may face. The second lesson learned is to
recruit experienced talent within a developed digital ecosystem. The third is
to make sure participating members of the booster team already have viable
businesses running so that they do not have to rely initially on the revenues
from the value chain and can use pre-existing revenue to invest in rural
solutions as needed. The last insight is for providers to organize mobile money
teams in different ways and to be open to adapt to the existing structure when
technical experts design the booster teams.
This approach significantly increased penetration in the rural areas. These
hard-to-reach areas often have low population densities, poor roads and
scattered economic activities. Nevertheless, UNCDF has made one of the most
concerted efforts in the industry to determine what it takes to breach the
rural frontier and to make sure no one is left behind in the digital era.
The publication captures the project and lessons learned in more detail.
Read the
innovations brief.
Distributed by APO Group on behalf of United Nations Capital Development Fund (UNCDF).
SOURCE
United Nations Capital Development Fund (UNCDF)