Micro Mobile shops for street vendors

There is a problem in our community whereby street vendors/local business men/women to walk distant areas searching for customers of their goods. Such that they're wasting good of their energy and still not making much profit.

Therefore, having a micro mobile app, which will enable each individual street vendor to create his/her online shop, advertise products online and link with customers, will improve business operations to street vendors.

Our solution will change lives as it will aid to raise the incomes of street vendors, while releasing their energy to other national development activities, also it will improve access of their products and much legalize their business. On the other hands, the consumers/customers will have access to products from street vendors at fair price. Also the solution will open doors for other businesses such as delivery solution and mobile money transactions.

Access to markets and legalizing street vendors business. At some perspective street vendors have been considered as an illegal business, such that other people do think their thieves and involved to criminal acts. Also, street vendors do utilize much of their quality time of the day moving from one street to the other in search of markets/customers, by which they waste a lot of their time and energy in doing so, yet they are not getting that much profit in their operations. 

These challenges, have lead street vendors to be harshly treated by some authorities and lack their profits as they do aspire.

Our solution will devise a mobile application (based in Android), the application will have the interface for a street vendor, whereby him/her will create user account, register the business, post products, communicate with customers, receive products orders, and dispatch products. Furthermore, the platform will have an interface for customers, whereby customers will access product display, compare products, communicate/negotiate with the street vendor (through sms, audio, and video chat), purchase products and rate the service/products from a certain street vendor. In addition the platform will serve as the education and marketing information portal for street vendors, whereby several articles on entrepreneurship, business development and marketing will be shared to improve their business operations.

The solution will serve street vendors, majority are youth (both males and females) with ages from 16 years to 35 years. Their core activity is doing small business of selling products, they do sell most of products that range from home use, office use and some industrial use products. Currently we've conducted several studies on the needs of Small and Medium Scale Enterprise, and we identified their needs both in technical perspective and market perspective.

Majority of street vendors are owning mobile phone

Our solution is innovative due to the digital inclusion in the low level business operations. The solution will bring in the less favored business youths in our country in a single mobile spot, whereby they can easily sell their products and easily access potential market.  

The core technology is mobile technology, with an inclusion of the web technology. The platform also will include market/data analytics technology which will aid the street vendors to identify potential markets and product customers.

Mobile apps have proved to add value in business operations, the only challenge is their not much/widely integrated to much of business operations, in specific low level business. See https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-22348-3_13

We believe in proper planning, before executing our projects. And in case we fail, we do adjust our plans and take other wave of execution.

Our solution will effect 

100,000 street vendors on the 1st year of operation

Then more than 10 million street vendors in 5 years period

Our goals are to develop a robust mobile solution for street vendors, then to build awareness to the population of Tanzania about the solution, and later on to see street vendors business go online (making street vendors easily access markets/customers), improving access of street vendors products and finally to convert street vendors business to be an accredited job opportunity.

The fear of technology is big barrier towards execution of this solution.

We've a plan of adopting inclusive and collaborative approaches in bringing this solution to life. This approach will bring ownership to key consumers of the solution and eliminate the barrier.

We are individuals working at the Open University of Tanzania. A place that provide open space for innovation and learning. The organization advocate on open ways of learning, such that it brings learners with diverse needs to study, and employ themselves.

Full-time staff

1. Prof. George Oreku

2. Mr. Emmanuel Thomas

3. Mr. Francis Mashalla

4. Ms. Joanitha Zacharia

Our team is a multi-talented with following expertise

1. Wide experience in action research

2. Computer and mobile app programming

3. Business and market analysis

Currently no

Our business modal will be subscription model, whereby street vendors will be contributing to the organization

We have strategies to bring this solution on the hands of the community, such that street vendors will be paying subscription of usage of the mobile platform. 

We're applying this to improve market and customer access of the street vendors. This will be possible with an introduction of micro-digital shops which are mobile based for street vendors.

Our partnership goal, is to work with individuals who will see the potential of this solution, and they'll be ready to bring in their positive energy in making this possible. And whenever necessary they can provide advice and areas for solution improvement. Furthermore, we expect to share the profits with our partners.

We welcome all organizations which will be interested with our solution

Since our solution cut across men and women, the mobile app will favor women in their business operations, such that they will be having an access to potential customers/markets through mobile enhanced platform. Therefore, the solution will release women from securities issues such as sexual harassment, and get them focused  in other productive activities.

Since the solution addresses a challenge of accessing potential customers/markets for street vendors, it is expected that the solution will legalize and open doors for street vendors business which majority of them are youth. Probably their income and livelihood will improve. 

Since the solution will introduce the concept of market data analysis/big data in identifying areas and products which street vendors are required to sell. Therefore, having an AI component in the process will add value to our solution.

The primary consumers of the solution are street vendors  which is the large business population in the country. It's expected to be the solution for the planet as it will open global doors for street vendors which is the large business population in a global perspective.