The a. N. C. But those were the headlines and news continues here on aljazeera after in effect africa thats watching africa. Swear every year. This is innovate africa highlighting innovation and creativity across a continent that is on the rise today in its africa solar powered mobile phone charging sixty percent about crucially how self less than fifty percent. Now kenyans can run a business from. Its owner. And the young woman behind a growing take industry. And we wanted to build a platform that could really tell african story in a light. African economies are growing the i. C. T. Revolution is help to unleash the potential of many african startups in this episode we meet entrepreneurs who are fighting uniquely african ways to do business. Kenya is africas leader when it comes to mobile money. But also. With the Digital Payment platform and pass out around eleven and a hundred Million People use simple cell phones to pay their bills and thats more than double the number who have bank accounts. The most is key and is a typical limp as a user he has a Small Business providing services to tourists for the past four years has been successfully running played a tourist and driving village peas around nairobi thank you rusty. Good luck of the. One complaint over thank you max thank you good to be here in the Traffic Volume like this morning on everything its good. How do you how do you prefer to get paid you prefer casual as the other ways sometimes. It all started when kenyans who had no bank account or credit cards began to trade their time to pay for services. Of the deposits this system was so successful that it was fine chained and cold impassable is the swahili word for money it is now the most widely used form of payment across. The african continent. How does it work i give you my telephone number yeah. So is this where we can get them past the who dont think there is and president you can go and then you do their deposits and then it does not work and i noticed just as we were driving in here i mean we didnt drive for long but theres like an pesticides everywhere. Theres everybody is using a bus the long time ago there was this done as a robot its like backless this big bangs who are giving us a difficult condition its to drive a car and there has always been some mistrust of the Banking System and kenyans preferred to deal only going cash often sending process of money across the country with friends and relatives using the local bus network. Now transfers are made swiftly and safely from digital want that can be installed on any mobile phone so when i am present it was its and its in a butcher. I think its part of the business so you can basically do it anyway yeah im going to as long as its im president i dont its first time i was using and so i just want to deposit some money in my account for that i can pay the rosters off to handing over my phone number and passports my account was set up in just a couple of minutes and i was able to make my first deposit. See the messages just come through. They go two thousand chips just like that. So now ive got two thousand shillings in my impasse i can try and side with pretty much anyone can transfer the money to me. Youll be the first person i paid. But one of them pencil works well for individual Cash Payments its not just. And to facilitate the business but now this impair a new mobile money innovation that is designed specifically for Small Businesses in kenya. Thats where the gap was and thats where we. Are in connecting to. The technologies is a Company Started and owned by car utica. He has challenged the Banking System further and created a product called empath m. P. L. Works for a variety of Small Businesses like this Soccer Academy not only to pay and receive money but also to keep online records of transactions we used to request the press ok wired to pay through empress and then we came across an improved version over and. Mine which is called. Instead of getting money through my foreign land that i have to go to an intern we can draw that money employ actually set up a system whereby money is not being paid into an individuals for number but into the companys impact house. Its very simple because it has to work on its not for each of. Those dumb foods to come here and. To build and build a business. Basically after that you get a response for this and it sits in between. Business and. This is a place i come to basically how does the core of the spaceship on the i have. Got you have guys of ideas they come together and it builds awesome things. So this is pretty much where you got started exactly i was young then lots of ideas. And i decided to jump in and try one of you saying that this coffee shop was actually your first point it was. They really helped us it must be dear to you that youre youre helping out Small Businesses definitely one of the most frustrating thing about doing a business is fading you know and from my journey i realize that. If i had a better control of whats happening the business then that would have made it easier to sustain it and to succeed and so thats the vision for him to create. An opportunity for people to build entire businesses and industries around one of the clients thats using them for system is a smart fellow its not a very Innovative Company what they do is they drive you home in your own car so theyre. Using all system they able to easily subscribe clients using mobile payments in a very innovative way really to get people. Where a client sends money to invest it directly both into their account and basically they do not have to do any. On their part to make to very easy for them to track the clients cash and people. Call you is not the first innovator in his family my dad was a pioneer he was one of the first if not the first Computer Science graduates in kenya and he also had a passion for africa just dislike his passion it was more political and it took him to fighting for a second liberation so did you did you have a good job shouldnt you do ask your dad how you went from Freedom Fighters a computer. Actually was from Computer Science what was said to freedom. And i asked my mom. And i think was very passionate about the country about freedom he believed immensely interested and he believed that you have to do what you have to do so this is this is his. The big party this fashion has actually come back. So it seems to me like your business is is pretty. Crucial for for any Small Business to have what do you think is the role of Small Businesses in africa. Former. Colleague without. Saying anything that any economy can do whether the american economy. Or for that matter. Runs a Small Business hes hes got a few a few that he takes on. Maybe your businesses could come together and you could help. The rest of. Them give you can connect to. Growing economies need electricity and in africa its not always easy one rwandan innovator doesnt see the lack of Available Power as a problem he sees it as an opportunity. In the district of rwanda to rounding areas a well known to reste hotspots the Natural Beauty and population a major attraction. Remains relatively. The nearest town over forty five minutes away and there are no facilities like electricity. People here rely on mobile phones in order to connect with the outside world it with no electricity they have to make the long journey into town for a single charge. Of. Three months ago. Into a brand new franchise that has changed everything. Every day he wheels is a red kiosk into the center of the village. Its a solar powered store that can charge cell phones and other small electronic devices. Immolate charges a fee for the service and after just three months his business is business. Because it. Doesnt run. A court to try to go to court issuer civilians will. So this is the solar kiosk absolutely this is the mobile sort of. Thing off. There is a different option on the inside the. Us and the franchise model were invented by henry you could ruin the from rwanda one thing i knew was the lack of electricity was a big problem in the region and around the tube so Solid Technologies won the best technology to fight to solve that issue sixty percent of population has a cell phone bill less than fifteen percent have access with your city so that was the initial idea and we grew up but left as a student for the us same system. In the ninetys. Hes constantly joined back to africa theres no doubt in my mind that the future is here when i move back here pack up my bags there was nothing left for me in the states that you want people to go back there thats for sure and see. I start seeing the opportunities when i was on vacation here and then thats when the ideas are ok something is going on here and i will be part of it. I saw seeing people more and more people with cell phones but they were having a lot of problem charging the cell for including myself at a time on a blackberry as well for so i had to go home charge my phone go back to the city i was a manual be cool to have a kiosk in a city wake it is charging so i did some research i went online and i look at energy as i was you know you look at a statistic here less than twenty percent of the population has access will each receive in a region its even worse in some areas you know so i knew this where i want to be so how many for cell phones would you be able to charge at a time so we can charge both about that up to thirty four and i want to know as you can tell we do every all the charger done u. S. B. Port all the we have universal plugs we can charge up to ninety percent different type of phone that exists in the world and you can see all the lights here the green eyes tells you when its charging when its not so you can turn on turned off ok and the control panel gives you the battery life. We want to make it the easiest possible to get around yes the whole body is a plastic base mold from the frame to the body the only thing metal is the body frame you can definitely see that the plastic makes it quite easy to move around maneuver flight yeah absolutely actually it is a lot system. To system if they want to go eat or they want to move away from the kiosk so nobody steals the photos if its a rainy day or cloudy day dont have much sun would you be able to go with the power of the battery for the entire day absolutely so were using. The batteries which is the best battery in the market right now the goal is for charge everything during the day from the solar panel but the system automatically kicks in using the battery if its cloud if its raining or you know its automatically does it from the system it could rain for two days the bed will still be working because i want to create a full Business Solution for franchisee where they can really earn a living of this particular business. You know what were trying to really do is if you come to a kiosk in rule aereo or in the city the same service same Quality Service same product you know your uniform distribution ship what would it have had to do to buy into the business so the franchise business this version particular version was seven hundred dollars which includes training with tissue about Marketing Business model taxes etc where he also doesnt operate charging he can sell ad time as a pos system to sell or tricity which is fun and does to the closest his city where it is electricity so it seems like he has quite a few customers do you want to maybe get more kiosks in the future. John. Henry now has twenty four franchisees operating. So water franchise very simple. You see a lot of people that want to be in business. Business bottom so when you look at statistics franchise Business Model has a higher rate of success than traditional business eighty percent of franchisees succeed and eighty percent of traditional business. I will still have a lot of challenges now we. Need to monitor but how do you market to three four hundred kilos so now we develop a Software Technology that will be able to. Communicate with the kiosk and be able to norway to troubleshoot a kiosk remotely next generation will be offering Internet Services we integrate space because especially they really need an ocean i think its a very early stage you know because you can always have great ideas of problem solving. You can move from point a to point b. I mean the name of the gate that great ideas get started because theres more funding you know i see them all the time now we have to move. And create a real structure to support the earth to get them to the next level. In many of the citys most populous. Even those who dont have to make use of taxis like this one. And drive the credentials off and. And danger on the road is an ongoing issue. Im on my way to meet with the founders of a Software DevelopmentCompany Called page one of the latest project is tackling the dangers of unregulated motorcycle taxes. Thank you. Heidi welcome to an alternate thank you so much for having me i love the photography its a beautiful building you know we try to be the most Creative Space into gunny and i think were almost there. In the bag and the hey hey team operate from here a collective work space in kigali called the office. Its an Innovation Hub for small startups can share space and cool resources. Hey hey which means way in kenya one was founded by key piece and three of the students attending a summit course for mobile programming. In just four years the team has transformed big ideas into big business the company is now one of the leading Software Development firms in the country. This team that was formed grow to become something bigger than we had imagined and with grew from having just s. M. S. Best applications you know from the time that we started with a bit of Web Technologies to now you know full on smartphone applications that are running on i os devices on Android Devices and in the. Last year we want to transform africa award we weve been listed in forbes which was pretty great and twenty twelve got the inspire off the car wired as well with each with each price that we got with that we got we saw a client walking. Has quickly gained a solid reputation. They were recently contracted by the london government to create Online Public opinion surveys and have Given University students a way to access their grades remotely. Has acquired a small team but youre working on a lot of different projects at the same time yeah its a lot of work but we try to be as efficient as possible. One of their latest initiatives is a safe and new app tackling a big problem the application that were building right now its a g. P. S. Enabled application that will connect people are looking to take this what are bikes with really safe water by drivers who have been trained in roads have people have you know clean helmets who drive safe. Drivers licenses you know things like this your top on the web. And it gives you a list of what was available so why didnt does it actually connect to a specific model driver within your area and you know how their Contact Information drive plate number and their call basically a truck. To prevent person and that one really decides that out of uploads. To. Pay he is also leading the way when it comes to user access to local Creative Content theyve recently launched a platform called new. This Digital Content store all the most of inhouse production of apps youre also focusing on or your content like music storytelling. In your own i tunes or amazon basically for the continent and comics medium call it make. Do allows registered users to download locally developed access african literature comics and poetry as well as preview and download music we wanted to build a platform that could really tell africa story in a new light you know just share a great story. Its great innovations from all over the continent so we realized that we really needed to understand the context in which were operating understand what the needs were and this is where home going to missions really do make sense. And in line with everything homegrown even one coffee farm is set to benefit from hey hes soft were developing skills. We have this mobile application that is literally getting the farmers voice right from their farm to the Decision Makers during their district Coffee Task Force meetings to recode the boys who just need to touch. Its mostly the older generation in africa thats stealing agriculture theyre not tech savvy how on earth is information best solution supposed to help them so were working with youth that are somehow connected to this coffee as its a smartphone applications that youth in these villages will actually have and will be able to gold you know down to this farm and you know get but their issues are recorded share it with the Decision Makers and restarted with districts of hundreds of the industry. Sectors so this is actually how you gather all of the feedback from the various farmers to be able to put together and present to policymakers yes thats. Just. What. You recently team post six month contribution programs to Teach High School students how to develop an idea into a functioning. As you consider some of the afterward built by the High School Students i worked with in a six man and Incubation Pr