This archive report was first published on 25 May 2020.
On April 25, 2020, the scramble for relief food in Nairobi's Kibera slums highlighted the magnitude of hunger facing low-income populations due to Covid-19 disruptions.
Just a few days later, Kajiado County launched M-Riziki, a digital innovation to streamline food aid delivery. The system was developed by Empiris Creative Communication and Fashionnaire Corporation Ltd. in less than two months.
According to Governor Joseph ole Lenku, the app will help vulnerable poor people receive a pin sent to their phones to access food from a pre-selected shopkeeper.
The system, which has already been adopted by the county to distribute relief food, facilitates beneficiaries' access to relief food. Beneficiaries collect the package at their own convenience and from the nearest pre-selected shop.
Empiris Creative's Lorna Sempele and Fashionnaire Corporation's Joshua Nderi, the duo behind the innovation, have already patented the digital innovation. They collect data on beneficiaries identified by the financier and use it to prompt the beneficiary through a short message sent to their mobile phones, on where to collect the food and its cost.
‘The dignity of the beneficiaries is safeguarded since the system excludes gathering or queuing for the commodity,’ Sempele said.
‘Its features are tamper-proof,’ Nderi assured, adding that the system ensures transparency and accountability of the entire process.
With the system, financiers deposit the money to buy the food to a bank account linked with the mobile money transfer platform, M-Pesa. The shopkeepers are later paid through the M-pesa upon proofing the dispatch with receipts.
‘We collect receipts to prove that the beneficiaries did indeed collect the food because every beneficiary gets a unique number through an SMS,’ Nderi said.
According to Nderi, once that number expires, the system automatically bills them on behalf of the shopkeeper.
‘So, we have to get the receipts as evidence and that is what we will present to the financier,’ he added.
Lenku said the digital innovation would be adopted by humanitarian agencies that provide food aid to communities affected by climatic shocks like droughts.
‘A large number of people in rural areas cannot afford to put food on the table, let alone afford facial masks and that’s why we are working to assist them,’ he said.
