It’s not every day that a mobile application is launched to the accompaniment of songs, dances, and gymnastics. That’s exactly what happened at
Sarangombe in Kibera, where a crowd gathered to launch
M-Maji (“mobile-water” in Swahili). M-Maji is a mobile phone-based water information system that aims to empower under-served communities with better information about water availability, price, and quality. Water vendors use their mobile phones to advertise on M-Maji and water buyers query the M-Maji database to find the closest, cheapest, and cleanest water. All this is free and accessible on even the most basic GSM phones.
M-Maji was developed by
Weza Tele, a visionary firm that applies mobile technologies such as USSD, Mobile Web, and SMS to solve problems. Weza Tele teamed up with a group of
Stanford students, as well as
Umande Trust, an organization based in Kibera that addresses water and sanitation issues. Because M-Maji is a novel approach to improving clean water access, it was critical to conduct a randomized, controlled evaluation of our system. Weza Tele’s contribution to M-Maji involved requirements analysis, design, development, prototyping and testing.
