Tag: CARE Tanzania

This Land is Not for Sale: Mobile Applications to Secure Tenure in Tanzania

by Jaynie Whinnery Leave a comment

In East Africa it is more common to see land marked as “not for sale,” rather than “for sale.” People put up these signs because it’s the main way for them to safeguard their property without formal land rights. If landowners don’t have proof of their property rights, they could fall victim to bad land transfers or even land grabbing.

The CARE team in Tanzania is working to make it easier for families to claim their land rights with our Mobile Applications to Secure Tenure (MAST) solution. MAST is an open source application used on smartphones to help individuals claim their land rights. The technology is inexpensive and 3 times faster than traditional GPS methods!

The CARE Scale by Design Accelerator and Challenge aims to showcase innovative programs like MAST. We spoke with team members Jane Mgone and Thabit Masoud about what it’s been like to participate in the Accelerator so far. How is it helping them tackle the biggest barriers to scaling the innovation?

“It’s really helping us to think through what it would look like to scale and how to design for scale,” Jane said.

While the Accelerator has pointed a spotlight on land issues in Tanzania, unfortunately, the funding for this small pilot in 3 villages has ended for CARE. Another organization is picking up the pilot but will only be reaching about 40 more villages, which remains just a scratch on the surface. How do we keep this promising innovation from the metaphorical graveyard of abandoned pilots?

Whitney Adams, Senior Advisor for Design and Innovation, reflects that this isn’t an uncommon story. “Unfortunately, organizations like CARE are constrained by available donor funding and sometimes promising innovations simply don’t have their next donor or path to scale lined up. The project has to end and staff move on to the next job. We hope the Accelerator will help teams think about the big picture from the beginning. How do we scale outside this one project? What would a realistic business model look like at scale?”

Instead of relying on donors or the public sector to pay for scale, the team is considering a business model to make MAST self-sustaining. Can the service be sold directly to landowners? Our current estimate puts the cost around $30 per plot. But what if we could get it down to $10 per plot? Would we have a customer and a sustainable innovation then?

Jane and Thabit have been sharing concepts and ideas learned throughout the Accelerator with their colleagues. What is the key thing they want you to know about what they’ve learned? “We really need to think outside the box, aside from doing traditional work.” Jane wants to know, “How can we have a greater impact? How can we do something that the people really want and need, something that can spread like wildfire throughout the world?”

Meet the Teams: Chomoka (Digital VSLA)

by Stephanie Carey Yeargan Leave a comment

Over the past 25 years, CARE’s VSLA (Village Savings and Loans Association) model has revolutionized efforts to help low-income women improve their lives. Not only has CARE enabled 5,000,000 women and men to form and manage these life-changing groups, we have driven a global savings-led movement, engaging NGOs, banks, governments and donors in a journey that puts women and their savings first. Our efforts have resulted in over 12,000,000 members of VSLAs and groups like them as NGOs from global to local have replicated the CARE model. Members are routinely improving their lives through investments in education, health and entrepreneurship and women’s increased control over resources is leading to improved quality of life and opportunity for themselves and their families. VSLA has quite simply changed the game for poverty reduction. Through Chomoka (Digital VSLA), CARE is poised to do it again. This new initiative will empower low-income women to build a new generation of VSLAs that not only improve access to finance at the community level but also open doors to the digital economy that is rapidly transforming the world we live in and – until now – far too often leaving low income women further behind.

Chomoka is an emerging social enterprise driven by a proprietary mobile application used by VSLAs to manage their records, access banking services and gain advisory support from a trusted network of Chomoka agents. Once deployed at scale, Chomoka will accelerate and deepen formal financial inclusion while increasing usage of digital financial services in rural areas. The platform will generate an unprecedented, real-time data stream on the financial behavior of un- and under-banked groups and their members and offer new insights into the size, scope and behavior of these groups. Most importantly, Chomoka will enable groups to more effectively and accurately manage their transactions while also establishing digital financial histories and connections that open up a world of new possibilities. Chomoka expects to have over 1 million group members using the application by 2021.

CARE_HORIZ_2c1

Meet the Team

Mwimbe Fikirini | Program Coordinator | CARE Tanzania

Mwinbe Fikirini is the Program Coordinator with CARE Tanzania, and for the last several years has planned, lead, organized, directed and evaluated implementations of financial linkage activities to the VSLAs groups in areas of operation including Morogoro and Zanzibar. Mwinbe brings extensive knowledge of VSLAs to the team, having also trained and monitored the adoption of financial linkage and Financial Education skills by VSLA members. Going forward, Mwinbe will translate the proposal into a viable activity at the field level, including VSLA engagement in product design and testing, VSLA training on the developed solution and formulation of a realistic, field-level scaling strategy. For the past two years Mwinbe has been leading the LINK Up project in Tanzania, the largest effort by CARE to enable VSLAs to access formal finance. She holds a Master of Arts in Gender and International Development from the University of Warwick obtained in 2012 and a Bachelor of Laws from University of Reading obtained in 2009.

Christian Pennotti | Senior Technical Advisor | CARE Tanzania

Having worked across CARE for seven years, Christian has a strong institutional knowledge and relationship needed to move the project forward and find the right institutional fit. Christian is the overall LINK Up program manager responsible for program quality, design, M&E, partnerships and donor engagement. He is the chairman of the project steering committee and will serve as the lead in identifying and coordinating with project development partners and other external stakeholders including donors and prospective investors. Christian is a recognized leader in market development and is frequently invited to present at industry events. He sits on the Board of Directors of Farm Shop Ltd in Kenya and is the Chair of the Board of Directors at the SEEP Network. He holds a Master of Arts in International Development from George Washington University obtained in 2005 and was a Peace Corps volunteer in Uzbekistan where he founded a branch of the National English Teachers Association in collaboration with local officials.

Ken Banks | Entrepreneur in Residence | CARE International

Ken Banks, Founder of kiwanja.net and creator of messaging platform FrontlineSMS, devotes himself to the application of mobile technology for positive social and environmental change in the developing world. He has worked at the intersection of technology, anthropology, conservation and development for the past twenty-five years and, during that time, has lived and worked across the African continent. He is a PopTech Fellow, a Tech Awards Laureate, an Ashoka Fellow and a National Geographic Emerging Explorer, and has been internationally recognised for his technology-based work. In 2013 he was nominated for the TED Prize, and in 2015 was a Visiting Fellow at RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia. In late 2015 Ken was appointed CARE International’s first Entrepreneur in Residence. He is also a published author, with his first edited book, “The Rise of the Reluctant Innovator,” self-published in late 2013 with a follow-up, published by Kogan Page, released in March 2016.

Mark Malhotra | Innovation Advisor | CARE International UK

Mark Malhotra, Innovation Advisor for CARE International UK supports a number of social enterprises that CARE owns and operates globally. He provides technical support to the teams from business planning and financial modelling to operational guidance and hands on support. Prior to joining CARE Mark spent six years working in the telecommunications sector with a focus on marketing and partnerships. He has extensive experience working across organizations with IT, finance, sales and brand teams. He moved into the NGO sector through overseas placements in Jamaica with a local organization and in Egypt with the Aga Khan Foundation.

Karen Vandergaag | Analyst | CARE Access Africa

Karen is an analyst with the Access Africa program where she supports the LINK Up program’s monitoring and evaluation, CARE’s VSLA management information system, and the human-centered design process for the Digital VSLA project. She has previously spent time in Malawi working a youth entrepreneurship initiative, and a year in Brazil on a cultural exchange through Rotary International. Karen holds a Bachelor of Business Administration Honours from Okanagan College.

Meet the Teams: Core To Care: Get the Land Right

by Stephanie Carey Yeargan Leave a comment

Through the Mobile Application to Secure Tenure (MAST) project, CARE Tanzania has piloted a participatory and innovative approach to measure land plots through a mobile application technology. The software was developed by the private US company Cloudburst and was piloted in three villages, funded by USAID. The project was introduced to government officials both at the national and the local level before implementation. Over a period of 3 weeks the application mapped 910 land plots and the same number of Certificates of Customary Rights of Occupancy (CCROs) were issued to villagers. Out of these 31% were issued to individual women. Another 3% was co-owned by women and 13% was issued to couples. The remaining 53% was for men. These percentages of land being accessed by women are much higher than the national average of land titles owned by women (around 20%). This provides evidence that land registration can be executed in a relatively short period of time in a way that takes into account land rights of women. The sofware application simplifies the land registration process; it is an easy-to-use, open-source smartphone application that facilitates mapping by trained young villagers (girls and boys) verification by village land adjudication committees. It is also low cost, transparent and time effective. The methodology is five times faster than manual mapping and three times faster than the methodology which uses conventional GPS technology. Watch this video to learn more!

 

Jane Mgone | Coordinator, Knowledge Sharing and Learning | CARE Tanzania

Jane Mgone started with CARE in 2014 and currently Learning plays a key role in supporting CARE to achieve its new business model by 2020 through enhancing knowledge sharing and learning so that CARE can be more innovative and improve communication.  As a  coordinator, she is at the center of communication and information lines within the organization and interfaces with other departments to improve the use of modern technology and software as well as to conduct research regarding learning methodologies, best practices, and innovative opportunities. Jane has received a Masters of International Relations from the University of Leicester, and she has over five years of experience in the Department Sector with a focus on knowledge management and communications.

Mustapha Issa | Program Coordinator | CARE Tanzania

Mustapha Issa started working with CARE in 2015 and works coordinating initial project mobilization with the Government of Tanzania (GoT) and other stakeholders.  As Program Coordinator, he is responsible for conducting outreach and public awareness related to land rights, organizing training courses, and building capacity with regard to the key land laws and legal processes related to the formalization of land rights in the Iringa district. He is an engineer and environmentalist with five years of experience in Geographic Information System (GIS) and land surveying.

Thabit Masoud | Director Technical Unit, Natural Resources and Climate Change | CARE Tanzania

Thabit Masoud is a forester with MS degree in Conservation Biology from the University of Kent and Canterbury. Thabit has coordinated various projects and programs cultivating forest conservation and development thinking and has over 20 years of experience working with government and for CARE in overseeing and coordinating natural resources management projects and programs, with a more recent focus on community based adaptation and resilience against climate shock.

Shelina Mallozzi | Deputy Country Director | CARE Tanzania

Shelina started with CARE in 2014 and has an extensive background in program management for leading pharmaceutical companies such as Bayer and Novo Nordisk and most recently served as the technical writer for a local Tanzania NGO that was awarded two programs from USAID and CDC. Shelina has a Bachelors in Biology from Harvard and a Master’s in Business Management/ Public Health from Yale.

Paul Daniëls | Country Director | CARE Tanzania

Paul Daniels, a Dutch national, started his international career as a Junior Professional Officer with the United Nations Works and Relief Agency (UNRWA) in the Middle East and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Mexico.  He has a bachelor degree in Business Economics of the University of Brabant and a Master Degree in Development Economics of the University of Amsterdam. After his tenure with the UN he started working for international NGOs. He was a Coordinator for cross border Rural Development Programming in Afghanistan with the International Rescue Committee (IRC), being based in Peshawar. He also served as a Deputy Director for IRC in the same location. Subsequently he became IRC’s Country Director in Georgia and Vienna, Austria. The Vienna program was a resettlement program for Bosnian and Iranian refugees to the US. Following his tenure with IRC he joined UMNCOR as a Country Director in Armenia, where he was instrumental in setting up a local micro-finance organization, AREGAK, with a portfolio of 6 million dollars.  From UMCOR he went to work for Mercy Corps in Lebanon and then joined CARE as Program Director for Somalia, being based in Nairobi, Kenya. During this assignment he was forced to close all CARE’s operations in South/Central Somalia because of threats by the Al-Shebab movement. After three years he was appointed to Program Director in Sudan just before the separation of North and South Sudan. Since July 2012 he is the Country Director of CARE in Tanzania. His two adult children are or have been working as officers for international NGOs in the Republic of Georgia and Libya.  While in Kenya his family adopted a 2-year old who is now attending school in Dar es Salaam. During his tenure with CARE in Tanzania he worked with his team on a new strategy for the Tanzania office, WEZESHA, which is based on the CPR recommendations, in line with the CI strategy and focuses on women empowerment and climate change adaptation.