MIT Solve

Solution Overview

Solution Name

Agbaye.com

One-line solution summary.

Eradicating Poverty and unemployment in Africa by providing tools and solutions for SMEs.

Elevator pitch

What is your solution?

According to Statistia, there are 41.5 million Small and Medium Enterprises in Nigeria, and 50% of these SMEs find it difficult to get connected to customers. Foreigners also find it difficult to move around and there are no much information in our landscape.

However, Agbaye.com is a solution whereby foreigners and locals can find businesses, book places, and get connected with our heritage and culture.

What specific problem are you trying to solve?

We are eradicating poverty in Nigeria (and Africa) using tourism and technology.

Who does your solution serve? In what ways will the solution impact their lives?

Our target audience is Small and Medium Enterprises because they are the building block of development in any Nation. And, in Nigeria alone, there are 41.5 million SMEs.

What steps have you taken to understand the needs of the population you want to serve?

We have designed a minimum viable product (MVP) and launched it in the rural part of Badagry, Lagos State. We were able to gain about 976 active daily customers who used our product and hence we want to pivot our solution to other markets and landscapes.

Which aspects of the Challenge does your solution most closely address?

Improving financial and economic opportunities for all (Economic Prosperity)

Our solution's stage of development:

Growth: An organization with an established product, service, or business model rolled out in at least one community, which is poised for further growth

Explain why you selected this stage of development for your solution—in other words, what have you accomplished to date?

We have developed our website and have seen an active user of 976. Also, in 2020, we applied to the US Consulate General, Lagos pitch competition, and our startup was selected as one of the Top 30 Best Startups helping to achieve SDGs.

In April 2021, we won the Edwin and Stella Ajaere Grant Competition, and we were able to scale our users. We also applied to the Lagos State Employment Trust Fund (LSETF) Competition and we got selected as winners and we were given office spaces in one of the Lagos State hubs where our business is being pivoted from.

We have since pursued customers growth and our goal is to expand aggressively.

Where our solution team is headquartered or located:

Lagos, Nigeria

Team Lead:

Peter Ayeni

More About Your Solution

If your solution has a website or an app, provide the link(s) here:

agbaye.com

If you have additional video content that explains your solution, provide a YouTube or Vimeo link here:

https://youtu.be/1ScW_mpNWMc

Which of the following categories best describes your solution?

A new use of an existing technology (e.g. application to a new problem or in a new location)

Describe the core technology that powers your solution.

We use PHP and laravel framework for our database website. Our mobile app which is in its beta phase is developed using the Flutter and dart framework.

Also, we have started integrating python for artificial intelligence streamlining and augmenting real data in applications. We want to enable our USSD algorithms to perform effectively.

Please select the technologies currently used in your solution:

Artificial Intelligence / Machine Learning
Crowd Sourced Service / Social Networks

In which countries do you currently operate?

Nigeria

How many people does your solution currently serve, and how many do you plan to serve in the next year? If you haven’t yet launched your solution, tell us how many people you plan to serve in the next year.

We currently serve 976 people in Badagry, Lagos, but we are planning on expanding. The market is large and with just 2 million SMEs, we would be able to reach 9million users this year.

What are your impact goals for the next year, and how will you achieve them?

Our impact goals is to use the solution to eradicate poverty and unemployment in the Africa's landscape. We plan to achieve them by onboarding more SMEs.

How are you measuring your progress or planning to measure your progress toward your impact goals?

Solving SDG 8 which is Decent Work and Economic Growth would lead us to SDG goal 1 which is No poverty.

What barriers currently exist for you to accomplish your goals in the next year?

The cultural believe of most people in the rural part of Nigeria is that this cannot be achieved and they do not want to test technology. But we started from the rural part and we've seen early adopters, henceforth scaling to urban areas and taking these SMEs one at a time.

About Your Team

How many people work on your solution team?

3 full-time, 2 part-time (remote)

How long have you been working on your solution?

2 years

How are you and your team well-positioned to deliver this solution?

Deborah Muriana, which is a female on our team and a computer scientist from the Univeristy of Lagos hailed from the rural part of Nigeria. She has been with people of different background and has seen people suffer and is very passionate about helping them.

Peter Ayeni's--the team lead's--uncle died in the year 2017, leaving his wife to cater for 2 children. She ran a small restaurant but wasn't able to see customers. And this is Badagry where foreigners and locals from different part of the world visit on daily basis because of its history and ancestorial background.

When I got to know, we performed a survey by going to the first storey building in Nigeria (which is located in Badagry) to check on the foreigners and most of them complained of not seeing the delicious delicacies Nigerians boast of in their movies. I then decided to help my aunt. I went to Deborah to help me with algorithms in building the website, I ran targeted ads on social media and google, and my aunt which was on the verge of bankruptcy and had her two children dropping out from school was able to gain traction.

This website did not only connect locals and foreigners to her, but she could also connect with delivery agents, who would take her food out for delivery.

Deborah and I were happy to have made an impact, and hence, we launched Agbaye.com.

What organizations do you currently partner with, if any? How are you working with them?

We currently partner with the Lagos State Employment Trust Fund because we use their offices (hubs). That is where our business is been carried out from.

Your Business Model & Resources