Arifu Chatbot

Millions of people are disconnected from opportunities, information, and services that would enable them to make critical life decisions.  Many organizations have information and skills training programs that can help, however, traditional methods of delivering information and knowledge are often too expensive for organizations to offer regularly, adapt to changes, and scale to reach those in need.  Digital technologies are facilitating diverse populations in different geographies and with different demographics to secure information and knowledge thereby creating equality across the board.  Arifu proposes to scale its digital literacy programs to individuals across different geographies, connecting many to opportunities that can create economic benefits and reduce poverty.  Arifu will use a two-way interactive multi-lingual platform through Short Code Messaging (SMS), WhatsApp Facebook Messenger, and  Telegram for free and create knowledge to facilitate access to KaiOS phones by the rural poor.  

Unemployment is one of the greatest challenges inhibiting economic growth, across Africa, Kenya included, particularly low among young Kenyan women, driven mostly by lower labor force participation.  According to the 2014 Kenya Skills toward Employment and Productivity (STEP) survey, only 37 percent of women aged 20 to 24 years work in urban Kenya, compared to 60 percent of men.  Almost 80 percent of those employed and aged between 15 and 24 years have an informal job, against 70 percent or lower for the rest of the population. The Kenya Vision 2030 amplifies the problem of youth unemployment and specifically highlights the need to develop their skills for self-employment. 

A second challenge is that rural communities, especially in Africa, still lack access to digital literacy (WB 2020).  As the internet becomes increasingly embedded in the lives of individuals, communities, and nations, it is more critical than ever before to ensure universal access. Digital education and training play a key role in enabling communities to become fully included.

Through Arifu's digital, financial & business literacy skills training on its mobile platform women and vulnerable groups can learn to do business online and attain financial inclusion as demonstrated in our impact studies.

Arifu is a mobile learning solution that provides both an education technology platform and a content digitization service. The Arifu chatbot - with its basic-phone compatibility and content marketplace - enables personalized learning services that make learning free and relevant while generating valuable insights and analytics for partners. This is made possible through its B2B business approach which sees partners paying for content digitization, platform access, and delivery through SMS.  Arifu uses a human-centered approach to design content ensuring that learners' situations and contexts are taken into account delivered through a two-way Short Code Messaging (SMS) interactive learning approach which increases engagement with content driving positive behavior change and enables low-income people to access learning using a simple feature phone.

Digital learning content is delivered by partnering with Mobile Network Providers (MNOs) in given geographies.  Learning can also be accessed through smartphone channels via Facebook Messenger, Telegram, and WhatsApp.   Arifu’s learning is highly replicable and can be deployed in any geography through minimal adaptation to contextualize it to learners' circumstances and contexts.  Such include language, social makeup of communities, the best learning approach is determined by Arifu research team, products to be offered, and the contacts of such product providers. 

The Arifu mobile learning solution targets the low-income, low-skilled rural dwellers especially in the agricultural sector, characterized by unemployed youth and women between the ages of 18-35 years.  It also targets existing micro-enterprises dubbed “Mom & Pop” shops which are also called Dukas in Kenya.  These are targeted in order to enable owners to develop skills that can contribute to making their businesses competitive. Arifu targets refugees and displaced individuals with digital, financial, and business literacy to enable them and their host communities to access products, services, and economic activities.

Before developing training content Arifu's research, impact, and learning teams visit them to collect data through interviews, observation and focus group discussions to understand their learning needs, their contexts in terms of digital skills objectives, business opportunities, and the most suitable learning approach.  Arifu aims to give them financial literacy and entrepreneurship skills as well as digital marketing skills to enable them to improve existing business competitiveness and to create new businesses.

Our aim is to equip these groups with knowledge, information, and skills that will help them to attain economic independence in an age where countries are working towards accelerating digital inclusion.  

The overall outcome of Arifu's solution is to increase the demand for digital literacy, create economic opportunities through digital literacy, improve household incomes, and the overall well-being of diverse communities.

Arifu is educating and training people in digital literacy to help communities attain digital inclusion.  We target diverse beneficiaries including youth, women, girls, and vulnerable groups.  Once these groups gain digital literacy they attain freedom and confidence to explore the opportunities presented through their mobile phones and the internet. Through any mobile phone, digital learning can take place, and through platforms such as WhatsApp, YouTube, Instagram, and Facebook, individuals with smartphones/kaiOS phones can access resources and networks opening channels for unlimited opportunities.  These opportunities will increase their potential to create a living through new employment and businesses.

Arifu was launched in 2015 and since its launch our platform has been accessed by over 1.5 million learners in Kenya, Nigeria, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda, South Africa, and Zambia.  We have partnered with diverse partners in different sectors i.e. Telecommunications, Financial Services, Agriculture, Micro-Insurance, Refugees, and Housing, through the different channels on our platform. 

Some of our most impactful partnerships include Safaricom's Digifarm platform which is reaching 1 million farmers in all 47 counties of Kenya, KCB's Mobigrow for Kenya and Rwanda, Equity Bank's financial product content for farmers, youth, and customers on Equitel network, Mercy Corps Agrifin programs reaching farmers in Kenya, Tanzania and Zambia and Mastercard foundation and TechnoServe reaching entrepreneurs and merchants in Kenya, Tanzania, and Zambia, Google.org reaching farmers in Kenya with crop and livestock best practices, and most recently Covid-19 content for small and medium scale enterprises in Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa.

Arifu is fueling the future of digital learning through innovation in behavioral science, personalization, and predictive analytics.

Behavioral Science: Arifu has been a pioneering innovator in the application of behavioral science to mobile learning since 2015. From in-field qualitative surveying to live AB-tests, our team is continuously experimenting with content framing and incentives that leverage known behavioral biases to deliver a more effective product experience that improves learning outcomes.

Personalization: Static, one-size-fits-all content can be effective, but the true potential of digital learning is the ability for AI-based systems to understand who an individual learner is and what they want to achieve in order to respond with personalized learning journeys that place them on the best path to achieving their goals. Arifu is pioneering personalization to unlock major gains in learning and precision agriculture for smallholder farmers to improve their yield, income, and financial health. Predictive 

Analytics: When a learner chats with Arifu, they share information about who they are, what they know and are learning, and what they need. Arifu helps partners mine this data through a growing number of predictive data products such as Skills Score, Deep User Profile bundle, Predictive Demographics.

Partners such as financial institutions who are seeking to reach individuals with digital financial product literacy are likely to find Arifu a catalytic tool in reaching beneficiaries/customers at scale with digital knowledge and information.

Arifu has reached 1.5 million learners in Kenya, Nigeria, Rwanda, Tanzania and Zambia. In one year's time, Arifu hopes to reach 600,000 more learners with digital literacy skills. This is based on our on-going projects and our product pipeline, especially the launch of a self-serve platform for digital content creation and distribution for partners which will target more beneficiaries with knowledge in existing and new countries of operation.  In five years Arifu hopes to have reached 6 million people.  

Direct beneficiaries i.e. those gaining access to Arifu's digital information and education and potentially having a meaningful change in their lives are expected to reach 3 million. These are individuals who will visit the Arifu platform and engage with content several times and with several different content topics.  We anticipate Arifu to indirectly impact families, suppliers, business partners, etc. through the 3 million impacted learners.  Therefore, we estimate an indirect reach of households, service providers, communities (e.g. with health, weather, content), at 5 times the direct numbers.

1. Cost-effectiveness on improved livelihoods of blended in-person models utilizing Arifu in agriculture supply chains as well as youth entrepreneurship in Kenya and Ethiopia (with the World Bank, Google.org, and IFC). 

2. Improving economic outcomes for women-led businesses in Kenya, Tanzania, and Nigeria (grant pending for Nigeria and Kenya, and analysis pending for associated links of content engagement on women’s business performance in partnership with the World Bank).

3. Enhancing upon our pilot credit-scoring research where learning about financial management can in itself act as complementary for predicting credit-worthiness.

4. Additional use cases Arifu’s commercial viability for lending products catering to low-income individuals (in partnership with Faulu).

5. Evidence of SME business growth based on business and financial education linked with Arifu content (Google.org and Mastercard CIG partnerships).

Arifu has 35 full-time staff in Nairobi, San Francisco, and India distributed across the following units: 

Business Development, Project Management, Research & Impact, Learning & Content Development, Technology Engineering & Data, Quality Assurance, Operations, and Talent.

Arifu has 5 interns and 3 consultants.

Arifu's contractors include MNOs and Cloud-based services. 

The innovation is led by a leadership team that is diverse and highly qualified as portrayed below.

Craig Heintzman, Founder and CEO

Craig has over 10 years of experience working in ICT4D, M4D, and SME Development in Tanzania, Kenya, Zambia and Zimbabwe enabling him to better understand the communities we are targeting. He previously worked at MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab and the World Wide Web Foundation.  

Marisa Conway, Chief Learning Officer

Marisa has 12 years of experience as an educator in Mali, Guinea, Japan and the US. She has a Bachelor of Science in Psychology and a Bachelor of Arts in Anthropology, which helps in ensuring that her team develops impactful digital training content. 

Yvonne Good, Chief Operations Officer

Yvonne has over 15 years of experience in operational management. Yvonne holds a Global Executive Master of Business Administration (GeMBA), a Bachelor of Commerce degree (Finance), a Certified Public Accountant (CPA -Kenya) enabling her to carry out the organization's fiduciary responsibility.

Nyimbi Odero, Chief Technology Officer

Nyimbi has over 25 years of experience in both the public and private sector that has spanned across the African continent. He headed Google in West Africa and wrote software for voter registration in Nigeria. His knowledge of the African continent from a Tech perspective enables him to make the right decisions for the platform deployment in the different African countries.

Arifu leadership ensures that there is diversity in hiring of staff, there is equity in roles and responsibilities and inclusion in decision making.  We have a diverse working team as well as a good representation of gender.

Arifu has a structured approach to policy development and implementation.  Therefore, HR policies are well structured and ensure that Arifu embodies these values through the day to day implementation of policies and procedures.  

All key policies and procedures are available upon request.

Solve offers opportunities to enhance our product/solution, expand our business partnership portfolio, create visibility and gain financial support for impact evaluation.

Whereas Arif is at its growth stage, it faces many challenges and it is still working on continuously improving its business.  We specifically see the following as areas that would be useful to our business:

a. Access to grant funding towards the attainment of our goals.

b. Join the Solve network where we will gain exposure to global and continental trends in digital inclusion which will give us a better understanding and targeting of our long-term business goals.

c. We would see great benefit in thought leadership interactions as with our exceptional leaders and our experience on the continent, we also have a lot to offer.

d. MIT may have exceptional leaders who can also contribute to mentoring our mid-level managers.

e. Exposure to media events, conferences where Arifu can showcase its digital technologies to the world.

f. Legal support on the different IP-related issues that Arifu should be paying additional attention to in addition to what we have in place.

• Business Model in terms of our product pricing.  One of the challenges we face is the sustainability of the platform and as indicated earlier finding the right pricing model.  The pricing framework is still an area we would like to refine.
• Public relations-- marketing strategy to refine our competitive advantages, create more visibility of Arifu through stories through key media platforms/publications.
• Monitoring and evaluation: Refine our Theory of change along the different use cases and define a clear M&E framework that will be easy to plug in the indicators for each use case and help in measuring impact better. 

We would like to partner with the following:

a. MIT department that is handling Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning.

b. MIT business research and impact department.

c. Tru Trade for whom we can digitize content to attract more farmers to their markets in Kenya and Uganda.

d. Fresh Direct Nigeria whose content we can digitize and avail it widely in Nigeria for awareness creation.

e. Meal Flour also whose content we can digitize to enable populations learn about this product.

f. Raspberry T Foundation which we can link to translators on our platform for resources.

Arifu has previously digitized financial literacy and business skills for refugees and host communities in Kenya and Tanzania.  Arifu can collaborate with its partners, Equity Bank and Norwegian Refugee Council to digitize business and financial literacy content to benefit girls and young men living in Dadaab and Kakuma camps in Kenya.  These digital services will also be extended to the host communities who also need to create economic empowerment for their families and the community at large.

Arifu takes an ecosystem approach to supporting people to access information and opportunities using a digital chatbot. We will partner with organizations to bring learners a wide range of content to help build skills and access products and services safely and streamlined to reduce barriers. Arifu learners will be able to engage with content across a range of topics on their channel of preference. This means that they can use information hosted by Arifu as a holistic tool to support them in health, business, finance, farming, etc. Depending on their device they also have the option to switch between a completely free experience on SMS, where even messages are paid for to engage with rich media, depending on their data access and connectivity. In addition, Arifu partners with organizations to offer learners several tools to enhance their experience, such as weather updates (in partnership with aWhere), personalized decision support tools (in partnership with IITA)  where precise recommendations are given based on learner inputs, tools to help them set and track personal financial goals, and direct integrations to partner products so they can go from learning to taking up and using a partner product. 

This is how we plan to advance digital inclusion through an eco-system approach.