Inspiration
Millions of skilled workers across rural Africa — tailors, welders, phone repairers, tutors — have no digital presence, not because their skills aren't valuable, but because signup forms assume literacy and smartphone comfort many don't have. We wanted getting online to feel like talking to someone at the market, not filling out paperwork. That's where the name comes from: Sokoni means "at the market" in Swahili.
What it does
Sokoni is a conversational profile builder. An AI asks one simple question at a time about a worker's trade and services, building a live "trade card" as they talk. Completed profiles join a searchable public directory. A simulated SMS interface shows how this could extend to feature phones, not just smartphones.
How we built it
Conversation logic: Anthropic's Claude API Frontend: Lightweight, framework-free chat interface, live trade card, and directory Backend: Vercel serverless functions Storage: Redis (Upstash) for persistent profiles
Challenges we ran into
The biggest challenge wasn't technical — it was designing for the reality that many rural workers don't have reliable internet or a smartphone at all. A web chat interface, however simple, still assumes a data connection. That's what pushed us toward the SMS interface: basic phones and SMS work almost everywhere in rural Africa, even where mobile data doesn't reach. We simulated this flow for the hackathon build, since real telecom (SMS gateway) integration was out of scope for the timeline, but the same conversational AI engine behind the web chat is designed to power it.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
A conversational interview that genuinely removes the literacy/form barrier, not just a cosmetic chat skin A working end-to-end deploy: live site, persistent storage, and a searchable directory, all shipped under deadline
What we learned
Building "accessible" software means questioning the format itself, not just simplifying it. A form is still a form no matter how few fields it has — the real fix was removing the form entirely.
What's next for Sokoni
Real SMS/USSD integration for non-smartphone access Multi-language support Worker verification and trust features Location-based search for rural and peri-urban areas
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