BuffaloGrid

We are committed to connecting unconnected students in underserved and remote communities.

Solution:
A solar-powered stand-alone unit that can charge 10 mobile devices at a time, support 15-20 simultaneous devices streaming and an equal number of units downloading.
3G or 4G enabled connection to our Cloud-Based Management system to manage and update end-to-end industry-standard content protected regionally relevant content, information and services available via the BuffaloGrid App.
Provision of auxiliary hardware in the form of sim-free tablets depending on circumstances per family or children in classrooms.

Being a very low-cost solution, easy to use with basic or no digital skills, specifically designed and built for rugged environments where quality education is hard to come by let alone connectivity. Providing the necessary elements to connect underserved and remote classrooms with three basic hardware elements will bring students into the 21st century. 

To solve the connectivity problem of schools to provide the national curriculum and supplementary programs to make classrooms equitable in underserved and underdeveloped regions innovation is essential.  

Pre-COVID, over 3.7 million potential students were out of school in Afghanistan, 60% of them being girls, the pandemic has exacerbated the situation. 

Over 48% of school-age refugees are out of school, consistently seen to have increased with the pandemic. 

The scale of this problem is immeasurable not just in Afghanistan and Refugee Camps in Sub-Saharan Africa, but all over the developing world. In 2018 it was estimated that over 250M children, adolescents and youth were out of school. The potential for making education available and equitable is possible with our simple and low-cost solution. 

Affordability, infrastructure, connectivity and accessibility are standard features of the BuffaloGrid Hub, which supports not just education in the classroom but also teacher training, curriculum updates, extracurricular material, portals and supplementary education material as the new norm.

In certain circumstances, providing sim-free tablets to families and schools furthers the education effort if own devices are not available. 

Specifically designed for rugged and harsh environments, the stand-alone BuffaloGrid Hub is solar-powered and can charge 10 mobile devices at a time. While providing access through the BuffaloGrid App to flawless streaming and downloading of specifically selected and pre-loaded content through the offline wifi provided by the Hubs. 

 Users are able to register via a touch screen using an SMS-based authentication flow to access free charge for their devices. 

The Hubs are connected to the BuffaloGrid Cloud via local Mobile Networks, where all content is managed, regularly updating changes and additions in content directly to the Hubs and permit for feedback of usage and metrics, to support impact assessments and KPI planning. The Hub includes an LTE modem that allows for remote configuration and hardware updates. Testing shows we can solve 95% of Hub technical problems.

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Our solution serves the schoolchildren, youth and adolescents of the 3.4 billion people who are not yet connected to the Internet but have access to 3G and 4G. Our solution tackles the main barriers users face to get connected-

• Lack of infrastructure including power and internet access, are fundamental barriers to equitable access to education. 
• Affordable access to devices and data.
• Lack of digital skills to access education content made available by government and organizations during the pandemic as one of the main barriers to continuing their education. 

To best understand the needs of students in Afghanistan we have partnered with the Ministry of Communications and IT of Afghanistan, who are working on the digital transformation strategy and school connectivity in the country with the Ministry of Education so that their students across the nation can have equal access to education. We have been designated to work with one of the Minister's Senior Advisors to prepare this proposal and coordinate the effort under the patronage of Her Excellency Masooma Khawari. With a focus on providing Hubs with the national curriculum and auxiliary education material developed for the region and tablets to schools, classrooms, families and students with a focus on girls in underserved and rural areas in the country. 

To prove the universality of the service we have also partnered with Techfugees to deploy the same solution in Kakuma Refugee Camp in Kenya and Rwamwanja in Uganda. There we have been working for 5 months with volunteers, civic society, NGOs, multilaterals and camp coordinators to select content and assess best practices for deployment of BuffaloGrid Hubs to support education from primary and secondary as well as adult learning and higher education with key content partners.

In any deployment, whether commercial or humanitarian, we select content and deploy Hubs using local knowledge and initiative. Our solution addresses user’s needs for connectivity while providing access to updatable, digital, safe, quality educational tools and learning outlets. 

COVID-19 has drastically disrupted the conventional way of learning, however, this disruption can also be viewed as an opportunity to explore innovative and more equitable solutions.
 
Being able to support the Ministry of Communication and Ministry of Education of Afghanistan to connect school children and teens in need of online educational resources would transform an entire generation.
 
Same applies to Refugee Camps across the globe where young people can have access to tablets and computers in schools and many youth own smartphones but connection to the local mobile network most likely than not is poor and data is too expensive. 

We have completed the testing and development of our hardware (Hubs, battery packs) and cloud platforms, and our system has been through trials -- the first of which was a commercial deployment in Uttar Pradesh, India. Ever since, BuffaloGrid has served over 100,000 users and has plans already in action to expand programming. Our services are at TRL 8 (Technology Readiness Level) and are expected to reach TRL within six months. (73 words)

BuffaloGrid’s solution has the potential for global impact -- due to the low cost of our Hubs (under $1.80 per student per year), highly scalable potential, solar-powered (not grid dependent), mobile network-enabled (3G or 4G) sustainable solution to digital skills development and access of updatable offline educational content and services for all students or individuals within the vicinity of the Hub. 

Providing access to regionally relevant education content will bring those students up to date with modern technology in a safe and equitable way.  

All users have access to the cloud-managed educational content and services regardless of gender, age, location or availability of classrooms or quality of teachers. A tablet per family or within a classroom cluster supported by a BuffaloGrid Hub will bring a new world of connectivity and possibility to millions, starting with ~90,000 students in Afghanistan, ~15,000 students in Kakum and ~8,000 students in Rwamwanja.

By collaborating with public/private sector partners, including: local and multinational companies, civic society, NGOs, academia and multilaterals, BuffaloGrid can bring a global solution with a local and grassroots perspective to local needs and wants.  These partnerships include content partners, deployment partners, research partners, commercial partners, local and national government as well as grant partners - all that make up a coalition of the willing allowing for a broad, multilayered, and measurable solution that will strengthen all efforts. Content and distribution partners benefit from greater reach and users from joining the digital age. 

Our pilots have so far served over 100,000 users in India between 2018-2019. 

Each Hub serves, on average, 600 unique users. By the end of Q4 2021, we will have deployed 200 Hubs and will be serving over 120,000 users in Bangladesh.

With predicted growth led by commercial deployments in Bangladesh, India and Nigeria in partnership with local MNO’s - with contracts in place in Bangladesh and India and advanced conversations in Nigeria with two of the largest mobile network operators. 

For humanitarian deployments in Kenya, Uganda and Jordan we have partnered with Techfuees and various multilateral organizations with whom we are looking at a long-term plan to deliver our services for free in refugee and settlement settings across Sub-Saharan Africa, Middle East, Asia and Latin America.

Government deployments have received confirmation of interest from Afghanistan but require external funding and the Innovation Agency of Panama has expressed interest in using Hubs to bring education to indigenous communities. 

Finally, with our hardware as a sales service/franchise model in Turkey where advanced conversations are happening.

Leading with commercial deployments by 2026 we can have 20,000 Hubs deployed and be serving 12 million users. This can be fully achieved in one country as in India we have 100,000 locations identified in one state and in Bangladesh over 300,000 alone. Adding Turkey and Nigeria only exponentially increases the potential and complimented by humanitarian and government deployments the solution is of a global scale. 

BuffaloGrid's cloud platform will continuously collect granular usage data for data-driven decisions and analysis.

This will show-
Number of users accessing free power/streaming
Number of users accessing Premium content
Quantity of health/education streams/downloads 

Deployment planning, progress measurements and impact reporting are to be lead by Associate Professor in Economics, Department of Economics and Social Research Institute at University College London Gabriella Conti, Ph.D. Co-Investigator, National Child Development Study (1958BBC), Research Fellow, Institute for Fiscal Studies, IZA and CEPR, ERC Consolidator Award 2019-2024, Nick Hales Award 2019
Leverhulme Trust Prize 2019, Associate Editor, Journal of Health Economics.

Identifying a representative sample of potential beneficiaries of the interventions and collecting baseline data before the deployment of the BuffaloGrid Hubs and tablets when relevant. The survey will collect demographics and socio-economic indicators and other outcomes of interest at the individual/family level. We will then randomly select clusters (areas) where the technology will be immediately deployed (i.e. treatment group) and clusters (areas) that will receive the technology at a later stage (i.e., control group). The randomization process ensures that individuals in each of the groups are, on average, similar at the onset of the study and differ only with respect to the exposure to the program. In other words, this methodology helps minimize confounding factors and neatly identify the impact of the program. The core assessment of the impact will be based on an endline data collection to be conducted with the same individuals surveyed at baseline.

Full-time staff - 12

CEO Daniel Becerra holds an MA in Industrial Design Engineering from the Royal College of Art and an MSc from Imperial College London and has 10 years experience as an entrepreneur in design and technology. He previously founded an eco-friendly air conditioning company, Artica Technologies which went on to be acquired by VKR Holdings in a successful exit.

Chief Innovation Officer Chris Hibberd is a research analyst with a master's in physics and a PhD in Engineering from the Centre for Renewable Energy Systems Technology. He has worked in the R&D team of the New York Stock Exchange’s technology division.

Chief Technical Officer Andrew McCaughan holds a Bachelor of Engineering in Computer Science from Queen's University Belfast
Prior to joining BuffaloGrid, he has served as a Software Architect and Technical Leader in the healthcare and utility markets.

Chief Strategy Officer Vanessa Arelle is the Founder of Taboozapp, youth movement focused on diversity, inclusivity, equality and wellbeing of youth across the globe. She served for 5 years as Head of Cultural Affairs at the Mexican Embassy in the UK and has been involved in global diversity, impact and cultural efforts and strategy development for decades.

As well as our main UK-based team, we also have members situated in India, Vietnam, Spain, Portugal and the USA.

We have recently incorporated BuffaloGrid Systems Nigeria and staff recruitment will begin this summer.

BuffaloGrid believes that a diverse and inclusive workplace is not only essential but overarchingly beneficial. BuffaloGrid considers all forms of discrimination to be unacceptable in the workplace. It is the policy of the company to provide equal opportunities throughout employment, including remuneration, recruitment and the training and promotion of all employees. This means that all job applicants and employees will receive equal treatment regardless of race, colour, nationality, ethnic or national origin, sex, mental or physical disability, age, religion or belief, marital or civil partner status, sexual orientation or gender reassignment.

The company seeks to fulfil this commitment to equal opportunities through the application of policies and procedures which are consistent and equitable and which recognise the expertise and ability of each individual.

Funding and exposure from Solve will help the several million children in Afghanistan who are out of school.

Solve can provide invaluable strategic advice as we scale our solution globally.

We want to be part of a large network of innovators working together to solve the biggest problems the world faces today.

Human Capital - As we expand internationally sourcing the right talent and the right leadership in the different geographies will be a challenge.

Content Generators - Companies developing content in our four verticals (Education, Health, Entertainment and Sports)

BuffaloGrid is already working with the UNHCR and Techfugees to bring our solution to some of the 80 million people currently displaced worldwide.

This award would support BuffaloGrid’s mission by enabling it to hire more people and scale significantly faster. 

The prize money would also accelerate BuffaloGrid Hubs’ incorporation of mesh-networking hardware, which will allow its users better access to education/development/entertainment content, significantly increasing BuffaloGrid's positive impact.

The increased visibility and credibility offered by the award would help BuffaloGrid establish new partnerships with existing large distribution networks to enable the expansion of BuffaloGrid’s operations. 

The award would also attract content providers to enhance the size and quality of the content within BuffaloGrid's content portal and therefore make it more useful to our end users.