Smart-Gulit (Market Enablement) Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

Gulit Market place in Ethiopia- Photo by fbxx
Bilcha's story - Asko Gulit Marketplace- Addis Ababa, Ethiopia- Photo by Camara Education
The SDGs
Asko Gulit Marketplace- Addis Ababa, Ethiopia- Photo by Camara Education
Presentation slide-Technology tools and What “Smart-Gulit” app does?
Price list, Order - Photo of Smart Gulit app
Payment Service -Photo of Smart Gulit app

Inspiration

The Gulit is an important part of every neighborhood and community in Addis Ababa. There are many Gulit’s across the city where the business owners are predominantly female and lower/middle income. The Gulit is a place where commerce, culture, and the social layers of the community come together.

Here are some numbers to consider

95% of the small businesses in the Gulit are female-owned and run
90% of businesses owners have no access to credit facilities to help run their businesses
95% of merchants have no access to payments technology or smartphones

The problem:

The vast majority of commerce in the market is with cash, which can be lost or stolen.
The logistical systems within the market among wholesalers, Gulit merchants, and Gulit service providers to merchants are not efficient and labor-intensive
While there are some micro-lending and insurance solutions in Ethiopia geared toward small businesses, the gulit has no organized way to make these services available within the Gulit community.

What it does

The Solution: Optimizing and Digitizing the Gulit

Four key innovations will increase market function and productivity through a digital logistics application for:

Daily wholesaler provided in-app price lists:

This will save time scouting and negotiating for goods, provide a baseline price for increased fairness and transparency

Online ordering and delivery:

Online scheduling and delivery of the goods ordered to the merchant’s stall or shop

Embedded electronic payment through two methods

Using the existing CBE system which uses shortcodes and can be done from any mobile phone
Facilitate payment by crypto, via wallet-to-wallet transfers, all with stored transaction data for budgeting, disputes, etc.

Establish a DeFi lending, borrowing, and savings solution

For merchants and wholesalers to resolve short-term cash flow issues, establish a micro-trade finance solution for merchants and wholesalers to remove financial risk from the transaction

How we built it

We will build the final release of our app with Finastra open APIs

Challenges we ran into

Learning about DeFi and Crypto
Language barrier (Amharic - mother tongue)
Lack of Laptops (The group shared one laptop)
Internet connection
Lack of Video editing software

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Came up with a viable solution to a real community problem in 3 days/sessions,
Completed all aspects of the hackathon in a very short time-frame
We hacked into every student's ideas, with everyone participating and contributing to our solution concept.

What we learned

Hackathon: Amazing learning opportunity, teamwork, access to industry mentors, and collaboration around a real problem
Exposure to technology innovation, and to the FinTech industry
Embedded decentralized finance and how to integrate it into end-user technology
Sustainable finance and understanding of the UN SDGs and the impact of innovation