Project Results:
Pay your relatives’ water bills
Easing remittance payments for water bills
About the project
This project aimed to help Rwandan migrants around the world pay for their relatives’ water bills and access to safe water in Rwanda from an accessible mobile IT platform, available on multiple devices. In this way, they do not have to send international payments at a high service fee anymore, while the platform technology ensures that the sent money will pay water only. Moreover, the technology was to be integrated with the public water company and the water kiosk systems.
Unexpected circumstances
The project suffered severe technical setbacks in terms of the expertise needed for the mobile app development. In the end, they enlisted an intern workforce to build the mobile app as part of their studies.
Key results
Launch of the new mobile application was expected in late September 2018. However, due to the technical issues, this project didn’t work out. It had a lot of potential but lack of technical expertise and management meant that it did not go ahead as planned.
Tips for the future
- Finding qualified ICT expertise in Rwanda is challenging.
- Maintaining a positive and empowering relationship between employees and the project lead greatly contributes to project success.
- Projects benefit from engaging and sharing experiences and knowledge with available support networks (like VIA Water offers).
Project partner
Mergims
Period
April 2017 – Augustus 2018
Location
Kigali, RwandaLast project updates
No updates yet
Background
Rwanda has embarked on the digitization of literally life in Rwanda. From access to public services to education, Rwandans are slowly but surely using technology to make their life much easier. However, the process for Rwandan merchants to sell their services and product online is complex and expensive. Therefore, their activities are limited to their neighborhood. Even, utilities company are not accepting international payments!
Project Plan
After feasibility studies and signing agreements with water providers, we are to add a water payment feature on our existing online payment facilitator platform. The feature shall allow payment of existing water bills and or buying advance credit to be exchanged on water kiosks. we have an team of programmers, coders, marketing and business development to work on that feature. We estimate that the fully well working feature shouldn't exceed 1 year.
Target group
On one ends, Rwandan living abroad will benefit from this project as it ll give them a direct link to water providers. On the other side, by simplifying the process of paying water bills in Rwanda, providers have a new reliable source of revenue, thus can easily recover their pending bills.
Sustainability
The remittance inflow to Africa is in constant growth. Not only we are to facilitate the online payment of water bills, but via our activities educate people on the the efficient way of using water by channeling educational content in our SMS voucher distribution system. we are also planning to enter other African market, thus duplicating there what learned in Rwanda.
Overview of Goals
Enabling online payment of water bills and water kiosks vouchers, by people living outside Rwanda using modern electronic payment methods such as credit cards or eWallets, so their relative and friends in Rwanda can have access to enough potable water.