Benjamin Fernandes: ‘Building a digital bank for East Africa’
Benjamin Fernandes is a Tanzanian award winning speaker and national television personality. He worked at The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation financial services for the poor team in the US. He is the first Tanzanian to attend the Stanford Graduate School of Business as an Africa MBA Fellow and the youngest African to ever be accepted to the Stanford Graduate School of Business.
How are you involved in the tech & social impact space?
I have moved back to Tanzania full time after completing business school to build a digital bank (NALA) for East Africa. This is focused on creating a digital wallet for Tanzania, allowing users to pay for goods and services through their mobile device. The digital wallet seeks to support SME merchants by granting them an access to a line of credit while receiving seamless cashless payments.
How would you personally define social impact?
I define social impact as the ability to create value or behavioral change to the community around inspired by activities of the work you are doing. Social Impact is important as it creates value for the community you operate in. The world is full of complex problems and any way you can support the people as a result of the activities you do there is important. Social impact has the ability to influence key decisions based on the outcomes of the activities you work towards.
Which projects have you seen harnessing technology that has been particularly impactful?
- Toto Health Tanzania — Their goal is to reduce maternal mortality and improve newborn survival. They doing this by providing an SMS educational service to pregnant women in rural villages across Tanzania informing them on the different stages of pregnancy and encouraged post natal checkups.
- Pay as you go solar companies in Tanzania have been using mobile money to allow users to get affordable access to renewable energy solutions. This has been incredibly helped those in rural remote areas of Tanzania by providing them off-grid solutions. I recently stayed in a home that was powered by off grid solar and it was fantastic, it reminded me how privileged I am to have electricity.
How could the social impact of technology be measured better?
- Creating means or methods through the mobile device to allow responses to track progress on need or potential benefit for the users.
- Using sales agents as distribution points in rural regions to report from the community you are trying to impact. The collection of data for the service progress would be beneficial.
- Empowering data collection by incentivizing users to submit additional data (ie. ID etc..) , that way you could provide additional services to them.
- For those who have access to smartphones, you could add features to an application that could create additional value to the user experience creating a larger social impact to them and their community.
Do you believe tech has the power to positively transform the world?
Absolutely yes. I think technology gives people access to the convenience of services that save them time. I think this is one of the best things you could give someone. When you help them save time, you are impacting their ability to use their time to create additional value in other forms.
What is the main challenge you think technology presents to society?
I think the big one that pops up will be around ethical and moral values with technology and what it presents to society. For example, social networks have abilities to influence purchases and decisions of users by pushing certain content to them; this could prove very dangerous in multiple ways. I believe this is the main challenge that technology presents to society.
What is your advice for someone hoping to start a venture tackling a social issue using technology?
Interview as many people in the local community you want to tackle the social issue in. I think this is one of the most valuable things you could do. Running through an entire human centered design process of tackling some of the society’s most pressing issues is essential to the success of your project. At first, this sounded like it was a lot of work, however, as we progressed in working on our social venture over the last year and a half, this has been by far the most helpful insights we gained.
Identifying clearly what your goals are, what you are trying to accomplish then create your strategic plan in how you are going to get there and when you get there, what are the social impact results that you expect to have on the communities you will be involved in.
