Announcing Mobenzi
For some time, we’ve had an ambition to leverage the platform provided by Mobile Researcher to do more than simply collect data. We felt that the ability for ordinary mobile phone users to download and use the mobile application provided a great opportunity to involve them in something significant.
With this ambition, and some help from the Business Trust’s Shared Growth Challenge Fund, we’ve launched Mobenzi – a technology service which seeks to remunerate low income workers for completing simple tasks on their phones which are valuable to business and are not easy for a computer to perform. The name originates from the Zulu word for work – “umsebenzi” and the concept of mobility.
Over the next few months, we’ll be running a series of pilot projects to craft the software offering, assess tasks which work well, and work through a million other challenges.
What’s really exciting for us is that this is finally happening and allows us to pursue our philosophy that you can combine software, commercial enterprise and social development. We’ll be sharing a lot more about the initiative on the Mobenzi website – we hope you’ll join us on the journey.