Realising the challenges that middle-income working professionals and entrepreneurs face in accessing financial services, Mbuyoti and Memory Chola decided to co-found Moti Solutions for Africa, a social impact enterprise that is simplifying access to finance and promoting a culture of saving through village banking.

Moti Solutions for Africa is passionate about financial inclusion and they offer online village banking services where members can borrow and save money.

Before penetrating the market, the startup struggled with social acceptance. 

“The first product that we offered to the market was online village banking and people thought that we were a scam, but through persistence and transparency, we managed to get several people to use our services,” Mbuyoti explains

Moti Solutions for Africa is one of the startups participating in the Fintech4U  programme which are conducting in partnership with UNCDF. Mbuyoti mentions that the company decided to apply for FinTech4U because they believe they are solving a problem.  He also adds that the business is still looking for more capital to advance the business further.

“The other reason we applied for FinTech4U was to learn from BongoHive and UNCDF experts. Our major takeaway from Fintech4U was the human-centred design. The sessions on traction, how to create a pitch deck, how to deliver value and how to map a customer journey have helped us to interact with customers and give customers the right products.”

Talking of impact, Moti Solutions for Africa has been in existence for 1 year but so far, they have over 48 members in their village banking groups who have saved over ZMW120,000 and gained up to 31% interest in 6 months.

“We have also managed to secure 32000 square meters of land for our members which they probably couldn’t access if they weren’t in our savings group.”

In the near future, Moti Solutions for Africa want to fight financial exclusion by also catering to the rural populations. Their plans also include entirely digitising their village banking services so that people can access finance from anywhere.