Riki

Inspiration

We admire APL's efforts and initiatives in improving literacy in Sub-Saharan Africa. It aligns with our goals in making an impact in rural communities. We've identified a key challenge that APL currently faces with monitoring and tracking progress in libraries. We believe that Riki will be the solution for libraries to better manage their inventory and collect data to monitor engagement with users.

What it does

Through our inventory management tools and real-time library analytics, Riki serves two main purposes, primarily in an offline fashion:

1. Riki simplifies the library material management process. Traditionally, creating the accession register and registering book borrowers is a manual process, done by writing information down on a piece of paper. Rather than completely throwing out these tasks, Riki automates these error-prone steps, transforming the data into a digital format, while allowing for the seamless integration into existing library systems described by the library setup manual written by the ALP.

2. Riki supports library stakeholders in gaining a better understanding of how well the library serves its community by collecting data on borrowed books and analysing results to provide metrics used to assess impact. By digitizing the data, Riki can harness technology to provide descriptive analyses into important library metrics, such as how many books are borrowed, whether this number is increasing, or even how many 10 year olds borrow a fantasy fiction book.

How I built it

The mobile app interface was built using Figma.

Challenges I ran into

We encountered difficulties breaking down the main prompt of improving literacy for all Sub-Saharan African countries, since it is too broad of a topic with no boundaries set in place.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

Developed a feasible and innovative design that specifically targets a major challenge that APL currently faces.

What I learned

The importance of research development to identify key challenges and idealize practical solutions for implementation.

What's next for Riki

Feature additions such as: a librarian teaching program and expanding the app to gather data on all visitors to a library (not just book borrowers)