Sauti East Africa Limited

Mary is a gender and project management specialist with 8 years of professional experience in both the private sector and with non-governmental organizations. In her current role as Sauti East Africa's CEO she has recently led projects for clients such as Google.org, Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (Australia), and Palladium focused on empowering women-led SMEs to trade safely, legally and profitably. Prior to Sauti, Mary was the Communications Director at Xavier Project, which focused on improving refugees’ education in Kenya and Uganda. She also has experience within the finance sector in the UK where she worked for a global asset manager, leading a team within the areas of project management, client relations, and implementing business practices globally. Mary holds a Master’s degree in Migration and Development from SOAS, University of London, where her research focused on migration and conflict in East and the Horn of Africa.

Sauti’s mission is to empower women cross-borders traders to trade legally, safely, and profitably by deploying information platforms that specifically address digital gaps facing women traders in East Africa. To maximize accessibility for disadvantaged groups, Sauti designs its mobile-based SMS and USSD information platforms to be accessible with any phone (including simple feature phones), to not require an internet connection, and with simplified market and trade content in multiple local languages. 

We are proposing to expand our platform’s current deployments in Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda and Tanzania to include Burundi and Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). With over 13,500 users to-date, our platforms empower cross-border traders to make more informed business decisions, reduce non-tariff barrier costs related to bribery and extortion, and reduce personal insecurities related to workplace violence. Ultimately, expanding our information platforms will contribute to a more inclusive and profitable trading environment for all East Africa’s cross-border traders.

Cross-border trade comprises a significant component of East African economies. Estimates suggest 16 million East Africans are involved in cross-border trade, which is valued at over USD $2 billion per year. For women cross-border traders, regional trade is a source of economic empowerment, food security, and poverty reduction. However, many women cross-border traders (CBTs) are often unaware of their rights and obligations as citizens of the East African Community, which include the benefits of preferential tariff rates and compliance with complex border procedures. These information gaps make women CBTs vulnerable to harassment, impounding of goods, and corruption, which is experienced by 56% of women cross-border traders daily. Lack of market information about commodity pricing and currency exchange rates means CBTs must also buy and sell their goods at suboptimal prices and suffer losses from exploitative intermediaries and moneychangers. While relevant business information may be available online and via smartphone, gendered digital gaps often limit accessibility for women, who often choose to invest in their family over their business (such as smartphones and airtime). Consequently, the strategies employed by women CBTs to operate without this information puts them at a significant economic and social disadvantage in their own workplaces. 

Our project is a mobile-based platform that empowers small and medium size enterprises (SME’s) and cross-border traders in the East Africa Community to take full advantage of the regional market. Traders can access this platform by dialing a shortcode (e.g. *384#) with any kind of phone (no internet required) and interact with text-based menus to access officially-sourced, simplified, and real-time market and trade information. Specifically, the platform offers a suite of information related to trade documentation, taxes and tariffs applicable to traders’ products, current products prices in markets throughout the East African Community, exchange rate information, and regular updates to new border procedures. 

Users can also access a directory of social services in their area and can anonymously rate their border experience and report negative incidents, such as misinformation, delays, or corruption. Our staff aggregate this data and communicate with local advocacy partners for followup action. The platform is freely accessible on any kind of phone and is accessible at any time of day. Further, by taking advantage of the ubiquity of mobile phones in East Africa anyone with access to a cellular network can access the platform, giving the platform significant potential reach throughout each country where we deploy.

Women cross-border traders comprise a significant component of East Africa’s regional trade economy. While male traders face challenges of their own, they are often equipped with greater access to trade and market-related information, training, and know-how. In contrast, women traders face challenges accessing the information they need to grow their business and profitably trade across borders. Gaps in the gendered digital divide mean that women traders do not often have the technology (such as smartphones) to access existing digital information sources that relate to market intelligence, value-addition opportunities, and cross-border regulatory requirements. These information asymmetries mean that female traders are likely to sell their products at suboptimal prices to more economically empowered and better-informed middlemen rather than taking advantage of local opportunities themselves.

In 2017 and 2018, Sauti conducted mobile platform pilots that specifically targeted women’s gendered obstacles to accessing information in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, and Rwanda. The platform was developed with extensive participative collaboration with local partners and beneficiaries. Further, Sauti conducted several large baseline quantitative and qualitative surveys to explore these issues, totalling over 2000 participants throughout the region. To date, our platform has facilitating over 48,000 requests for trade and market information and benefited over 13,500 traders.

Cross-border trade in East Africa is a vibrant and empowering force for small-scale business operators. While male traders may be trading the larger volumes and profits, relative to women, the cross-border trade sector is heavily dominated by less visible women traders who trade small volumes – often carrying goods across the border. Given the ubiquity of mobile phones, the gendered challenges of women in the area, and the potential to accelerate an already entrepreneurial community we believe that our project is well-aligned with the Elevate Prize’s dimension to elevating opportunities for all people, especially those who are traditionally left behind.

The idea for Sauti started when the founders (Lance Hadley and Julia Lipoweicka) were conducting research on the challenges faced by small-scale cross-border traders in the East African Community (EAC) in 2016. One trader, specifically, inspired the founders: Wilkister, a single mother of two children, who travels by foot across to Kenya to source potatoes and mangoes, which she sells at a local Ugandan market. In her daily trading, Wilkister faces many uncertainties. On good days she will pass through the official border post and not pay any taxes. On a bad day, she might face long delays, bribe extortion, sexual harassment, impounding of goods, border officials’ claims that she is lacking certain documentation or the tariff and tax on a specific product has been increased, and threats of imprisonment.

I (Mary Rowlatt) joined Sauti as CEO in early 2018 to facilitate the expansion of Sauti beyond its pilot phase. We iterated on platform features after conducting a participatory human-centered design review: conducting focus group discussions, baseline surveys, and stakeholder engagements throughout the region. The end-result has generated a well-informed accessible information platform for East Africa’ traders, like Wilkister, to access the information they need to trade safely and profitably. 

Across the EAC there are thousands of women who make up approximately 70% of the cross-border traders. For two-thirds of the women traders, their work is the main source of household income in the absence of formal jobs. A trader’s household includes on average seven dependents, making cross-border trade a vital means of survival for large segments of the population in East Africa. These statistics and the personal stories of traders are what drives us to grow Sauti – a technology-driven solution that empowers cross-border traders to stand up for their rights as traders to equitable and decent work.

With a strong passion for innovations that target gender inequities in East Africa and a belief in technologies that leverage local capacities I joined Sauti as CEO in 2018. Together, we have iterated Sauti’s initial pilot intervention on the Kenya-Uganda border and extended the reach of project across Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, and Tanzania, growing Sauti's user base by more than 6 times. The positive and business acceleration impact I have seen by facilitating women’s access to information is an inspiring motivator to continue my work and continue growing Sauti across the East Africa region.

Sauti's technology driven approach to gendered challenges in the cross-border space uniquely positions us to deliver the project and impact our target beneficiaries. Past interventions have mostly been driven by donors and civil society organizations, which focus on traditional communication and behavior change models such as provision of trade information desks, training of traders, and sensitization of border officials. While somewhat effective, the reach of these interventions is limited, and projects often end when project funding is exhausted. In contrast, Sauti leverages the competitive advantages of mobile technology to deliver trade and market information services at scale at a lower end-user cost compared to traders’ traditionally expensive avenues. Relative to previous approaches, Sauti’s mobile-based solution offers a simple, easy to access, and inexpensive approach with potentially universal reach in the cross-border trader space. 

Additionally, our local partnerships and embedded human-centered design focus is a significant asset to our proposed project delivery. Involving cross-border traders in the design of our USSD platforms has generated important innovations, which aids in initial market traction when we deploy. These innovations include offering the platform in local languages, in simplified formats, and targeting the specific needs of cross-border traders. Additionally, our partnerships with local women’s rights organizations and relevant official agencies allow us to provide officially sanctioned information directly to cross-border traders. Integrating this local contextual knowledge into the provision of our services means that we design products that are highly tailored, relevant, and optimally suited for market traction in the cross-border trade environment. 

Sauti’s mobile platform relies on an information ecosystem of partners to source content for the users of the platform. All the information sourced from the various agencies and institutions is verified before dissemination to the end user. The local trade organizations assist with simplifying and translating the information. As a result, the greatest risk to Sauti’s platform is the lack of control of the information value chain as we depend on an ecosystem of local partners to provide hard-to-find information.

We have found ourselves in difficult positions whereby the local partners have not provided updated market information causing our users distress and frustration. To overcome this, I have led the Sauti team to think through ways that we can strengthen our relationships with key organizations, for example by offering reciprocal services. One example of this is in return for market price data, Sauti has been able to identify popularly requested products to market price providers and share key findings on the population’s behavior from anonymizsed user behaviour information. Additionally, obtaining key endorsements, for instance from the Ministry of EAC Affairs and partnerships with civil society organizations in other EAC countries have helped us overcome this challenge and mitigate the risk.

Leading Sauti through the COVID-19 pandemic has been challenging, and has required quick decision-making to adapt both the day-to-day operations and short to medium term strategic priorities.

In the early stages of the pandemic I sought out resources that could provide expertise on mitigating the risks of an economic downturn and conducted a risk assessment based on potential impacts on the company. Based on this we streamlined costs, reallocated funding to prioritise activity areas which are least affected, and we have even managed to find new opportunities. One of the key priorities for Sauti was to pivot our offering to remain relevant in supporting cross-border traders. We have successfully added COVID-19 awareness and business support information on our mobile platform, and continue to keep traders aware of local government developments.

From the early stages of the pandemic, Sauti’s team began working from home which was not common practice prior. To ensure the team could manage this change, we had open conversations about what was possible and adapted our working patterns to accommodate personal situations. This has included flexible working, improving at-home working set-up and power back-up where necessary. We also implemented communications improvements including daily check ins and video calls. 

Sauti is currently the only organization in the EAC providing trade and market information via USSD specifically aimed at the low-technology context of cross-border traders. Other interventions have mostly been driven by donors and civil society organizations (CSOs), which focus on traditional communication and behavior change models such as provision of trade information desks, information workshops, and sensitization of border officials. While somewhat effective, the reach of these interventions is limited, and projects often end when project funding is exhausted. 

In contrast, our project leverages the competitive advantages of mobile technology to deliver MSME-tailored trade and market information services at scale at a lower end-user cost compared to traditional avenues. This cost has significant benefits for cross-border traders, who face extremely high costs to finding similar officially sourced information. Our mobile platforms have enabled users to access accurate, up-to-date, and officially sourced information via SMS and USSD, which is compatible with even the most basic mobile phones. Importantly, by utilising technology the information is also available at any time. Relative to previous approaches, Sauti’s mobile-based solution offers a simple, easy to access, and inexpensive approach with potentially universal reach in the cross-border trader space. 

Further, our partnerships with local women’s rights organizations and relevant official agencies also allow us to provide relevant information directly to cross-border traders. Integrating this local contextual knowledge into the provision of our services means that our project is uniquely tailored, highly relevant, and optimally suited for market traction in the cross-border trade environment.

The key insight in our theory of change to address the issues for women in trade is that ICT-based technologies can be innovatively leveraged to address these challenges.

The problem: 

•  Women traders do not typically have the required technology to access trade information
• Women do not have the digital skills to access trade information - Women have few reliable sources of trade information
• Women traders have inequitable, disadvantaged access to business information reducing their opportunities to succeed as entrepreneurs or pursue economic empowerment

If we improve: 

• Low-cost channels of business information specifically tailored to women's technological capacities 
• Women's sources of reliable, relevant information

By:

• Deploying SMS/USSD information platforms which work on even the most commonly used basic phone
• Sensitizing and training various segments of women traders with digital literacy skills

This will:

• Reduce the access costs for women entrepreneurs to to relevant, business information with or without internet access
• Extend the range of services and opportunities available to women entrepreneurs
• Empower women entrepreneurs with accurate, real-time, customized business information

Enabling more women cross-border traders to:

• Identify new market opportunities in East Africa
• Identify new finance and access to credit opportunities
• Estimate their costs and potential profits
• Locate new market partners and peer support groups
• Diversify their product offering accordingly
• Save time and money
• Succeed as entrepreneurs and play a key role in line with East Africa's transformational economic vision

To date, the SMS/USSD platform has benefited over 13,500 traders, and successfully facilitated over 40,000 requests for trade and market information. The platform has helped traders negotiate better market prices and better forex rates with money changers; identify new markets and products within the East African Community (EAC); diversify their product offering; estimate their costs and potential profits; and save time and money by accessing information provided by the platform.

With our scheduled sensitization and marketing activities in the next year we expect to grow this number with an additional 7000 traders. These users will largely be expected to be new users to our existing country deployments. 

In the next five years we expect that with our new deployments in Burundi and DRC, and by reinforcing our presence and activities in the other EAC countries where we are active, we are targeting a total of 50,000 new traders. 

Our primary goal up to now was to effectively demonstrate the viability of our core service and the technological innovativeness of our project intervention. With user growth on Sauti’s market and trade information platforms likely to exceed 20000 total users by the end of 2020, we consider this a significant milestone that satisfies this goal.

Looking forward to the next year, our goals have shifted to capitalizing on our strengthened position by expanding our service offering, increasing our organizational capacity, and expanding our platform deployments to the remaining countries within the EAC. Specific to our service offering, we know that traders are often either closely affiliated with local agricultural producers or are producers themselves. We would like to expand the content on the platform to include agricultural information and target small-scale women farmers with a similar market and trade information platform. For this, it will be necessary to increase our six-person team with additional IT and programming support personnel.

In the next five years, our goals are to expand outside East Africa and establish ourselves as foremost experts in platforms related to cross-border trader information. In particular, we are targeting West Africa for our next regional expansion due to its vibrant cross-border trade environment, similar gender issues related to digital divide, and the ubiquity of mobile phones. 

Sauti must overcome three key obstacles to accomplish our goals in the next year and the next five years. 

1. The first relates to the mobile platform relying on an ecosystem of willing partners from which to source the relevant platform content. Sauti’s pilot sourced market prices from several regional market information providers, revenue authorities and customs officials verified information such as border procedures and tax regulations, and local trade organizations assisted with simplifying and translating information. As a result, the greatest risk to Sauti’s proposed project is the lack of engagement by local partners to provide hard-to-find information for the platform.
2. The second obstacle relates to generating awareness of Sauti’s deployed market and information platforms. While the product itself may have technologically universal reach within countries (a simple number that traders can dial e.g #270*35*), promoting the product to cross-border traders and to local organizations that can benefit from the platform is challenged by traders’ geographic remoteness. Further, in-person sensitization and workshops has also proven to be the best significant at generating word-of-mouth interest in the platform. As we expand our deployments, more organizational capacity will be required to facilitate these sensitization efforts.
3. Lastly, due to the significance of localization and varying nature of cross-border trade across East Africa, Sauti must routinely understand and update a wide landscape of trade and market information. With more deployments in the region, Sauti will require additional organizational capacity related to maintaining our information databases and our customer relations.  

Sauti has cultivated several resources to address the challenges related to accomplishing our goals in the next five years.

To overcome challenges related to partner willingness to provide relevant information content, Sauti has developed reciprocal relationships with key organizations by offering research and communication services dedicated to the advocacy of improved cross-border trade policy. Additionally, key reputational endorsements in Sauti, by the Ministry of EAC Affairs for instance, also mitigate this challenge. We intend to further develop these beneficial relationships to ensure that our partner willingness stays secure.

To overcome challenges related to local sensitization and market awareness to our information platforms, Sauti has employed a strategy of participatory engagement with local organizational stakeholders. They include cross-border trade associations and local government offices. As such, Sauti currently enjoys a steady word-of-mouth growth rate, which we intend to capitalize on as we grow our promotional activities. Additionally, our continued engagement with cross-border trader communities has strengthened our reputation among traders, such that our SMS-based marketing is well received, and in-person workshops are well-attended. We intend to continue this strategy as a means of overcoming challenges related to local sensitization.

To overcome challenges related to localizing information, we have already automated many of the daily processes with our platforms. We have also specifically structured staff processes to accommodate the tailoring of relevant information. In the future, we would employ a dedicated Director of Partnerships to engage Sauti’s network of partners to specifically generate, seek updates to, and verify platform information.

Integral to our work are partnerships with government agencies such as the Ministries of Trade, Revenue Authorities and Bureau of Standards, as they provide information specific to each country’s trade processes and procedures. We currently have memorandum of understandings with each country we have deployed in (Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Tanzania) to facilitate this information transfer. 

We have also partnered with CSOs such as the Eastern African Sub-regional Support Initiative for the Advancement of Women in Uganda, Pro-Femmes/Twese Hamwe in Rwanda, and the East African Women in Business Platform in Tanzania, whom we engage to support our sensitization efforts in the region. 

Lastly, we have partnered with market information providers such as the World Food Program, East African Grain Council, Infotrade, Farmgain and Kenya and Rwanda's Ministries of Agriculture. These market information providors allow us to present up-to-date market information across 107 products and 156 marketplaces throughout East Africa.

Sauti’s core service offering is our mobile trade and market information platform which is free to access to users to maximize social impact among cross-border traders. This offering is not revenue generating, and is cross-subsidized by other revenue generating activities. 

Sauti’s experience, knowledge, and market penetration in the cross-border trade market, uniquely positions us to support research and strategic activities of East Africa’s private and public organisations. In order to generate revenue we therefore offer consulting services in the areas of research, monitoring and evaluation, and USSD/SMS design and deployment.

We have conducted several research assignments for organizations such as WYG and TradeMark East Africa. We also offer service-level agreements to clients to deploy USSD and SMS-based surveys at scale with real-time results, permitting us to conduct monitoring and evaluation services across many broad development themes.

Capitalizing on Sauti’s demonstrated track record deploying market and trade information platforms in the region, our path to financial sustainability is largely provided by a two-track strategy where we fund regional growth with grants; and fund day-to-day operations by conducting cross-border trade research consultancies and other revenue generating activities.

Sauti’s most capital-intensive phases relate to expanding the mobile platform to new border crossings and regions. The necessary fieldwork in these remote locations requires significant investment by staff and in operations costs. However, once deployed in an area, our headcount costs, marginal user costs, and technical maintenance costs are relatively lower due to the technology focus of our company. In the past, we have found that grant funding can be an effective funding source to progress the companies’ expansionary deployments. For instance, in Rwanda and Tanzania, our deployments were largely funded by the Department for Foreign Affairs and Trade (Australia) and Google Impact, respectively. We intend to continue this strategy by seeking similar impact grants to fund our growth across the region.

Our achievements so far in 2020 have demonstrated that we are succeeding on our path to financial sustainability, by prioritising revenue generating activities our 2020 projected income is double that of 2019. We have also secured grant funding to support our activities in 2020 and are targeting additional grant funds to facilitate our expansion across East Africa.

Grant Income 

Incoming 2020: TradeMark East Africa (TMEA) Women in Trade Programme, Kenya. Grant funding $100,000

2019 - Present: AFD Digital Challenge (Theme: Women). Grant funding $55,000

2019 - Present: Google Impact Challenge (Google.org). Grant funding $125,000

Revenue over last 12 months (July 2019 - June 2020)

Sales income $70,000 from consulting services focused on research and information platform design

Sauti is seeking to raise a total of $300,000 in grant funding to facilitate our expansion across East Africa. The two countries that we have identified as being of strategic importance, and where we believe that trade and market information services will be optimally implemented and utilized by traders, are Burundi and Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). We are therefore seeking $100,000 for set up in each country respectively. These funds will be allocated to developing tailored trade and market information platforms that respond directly to the unique challenges experienced by traders in these countries.

Across East Africa there are more than 20 busy border crossings where cross-border traders operate. We are seeking an additional $100,000 in grant funding to reach more of these border crossings in countries where Sauti already has a presence, but where we have not yet conducted outreach and sensitization activities with local trader populations. 

Sauti's expected expenses for 2020 are $250,000. These expenses will cover four core areas: 

• Sauti's operational costs including expanding our team as we grow;
• Outreach and engagement with partners and trader populations as we continue our expansion in Tanzania;
• An expanded information offering across Kenya, Rwanda and Uganda;
• New product development and innovation.

We are applying for the Elevate prize in order to help us reach our goals of expanding our service offering, increasing our organizational capacity, and expanding our platform deployments to the remaining countries within the EAC. 

In the next five years, our goals are to expand outside East Africa and establish ourselves as foremost experts in platforms related to cross-border trader information. In particular, we are targeting West Africa for our next regional expansion due to its vibrant cross-border trade environment, similar gender issues related to digital divide, and the ubiquity of mobile phones. 

Winning the Elevate prize will enable us to expand our organizational capacity and open up an expansive network of practitioners and experts that will help us to reach our long term goals, increase our reach and maximize our impact across East Africa and beyond.

Marketing, media, and exposure: While Sauti’s technical reach is not limited by geography, our ability to conduct market awareness in typically remote locations is limited. Our experience shows that radio shows, and participatory marketing strategies are well-suited to maximize our impact, however, we so far been limited in our ability to conduct these activities on a larger regional scale.

Monitoring and evaluation: To date, Sauti’s platforms have had approximately 13,500 users. However, our goals and capacity have been oriented towards deploying in new countries and building our user base. While we have automated many technical processes related to monitoring and evaluation, our capacity to evaluate our impact at a regional level has not kept pace with our growth.

Funding and revenue model: Sauti has piloted additional technical innovations to improve its service offering and increase our impact. Support in this area would accelerate these innovations to a deployable stage. 

Local Trade Organizations: Our experience working with local trade organizations, such as EASSI and Profemmes/Twaweza, has highlighted the importance of local knowledge and engagement for developing our mobile platform’s successful traction. We therefore seek regional civil society partners such as these to facilitate and guide implementation of our platform at identified border crossings. We intend to capitalize on our mutual objectives to support safe and profitable trade. Specifcially, these organizaitons can support Sauti as knowledge experts, with local support capacity, and can extend Sauti’s reach by providing their members with training and access to Sauti’s platform.

Local Government Agencies: Forming close relationships with government agencies, such as Ministries of trade and Revenue Authorities has also proven fruitful for populating the Sauti information platform with accurate data. We intend to develop these relationships further across the remaining countries in the EAC, which are incentivized to partner with us due to organizations mandated mission to stimulate increased regional trade and integration.

Local Telecoms Agencies: Sauti typically maintains technical partnerships with 3rd party agencies (such as Africa’s Talking) to gain access to local telecoms agencies such, as Safaricom. These technical partnerships provide us with access to SMS and USSD architecture with which we support our beneficiaries. However, these agencies increase our service delivery vulnerabilities, and charge us for access to the telecoms agencies. We would like to partner directly with telecoms agencies to overcome these challenges and reduce our cost of delivery to beneficiaries.