The challenge:
Around the world almost 2 billion people lack access to formal financial services due to high costs, low quality and unsafe services, insufficient infrastructure and lack of financial education. As a matter of fact, those who are financially excluded make up to 80% of the world's poor, they have little access to services that help provide a safety net such as credit, savings, insurance, payment services, among others.
Over the last ten years, Kenya has seen impressive progress towards expanding financial inclusion, from 26.7% of adults formally included (meaning they use financial services such as bank or mobile money accounts that are subject to regulation) in 2006 to 75.3% in 2016. These percentages translate into nearly 16 million adults in Kenya having formal accounts. However, despite the growth in financial inclusion there are still 3.7 million adults (17% of the adult population) without access to any services. Additionally progress remains uneven between urban and rural areas. For example 93% of those living in Nairobi are formally included whereas only 25% are in northeastern Kenya. Rural populations are incredibly challenging for financial services providers (FSPs) to profitably serve due to customers being in hard to reach places and having different needs and priorities.
In this sense, we see IDDS playing a critical role through engaging FSPs, community members and innovators in co-creation to understand these needs and develop financial products and services that better suit them.
Why is Financial Inclusion important?
It fosters economic growth by helping people to save and invest in their education, their businesses and their households. It is a key enabler to reduce extreme poverty and boost shared prosperity by helping people develop a longer time horizon for their money so that they are not living paycheck to paycheck so to speak. Most importantly financial inclusion allows individuals to improve their financial resilience, achieve their goals and increase their welfare by developing savings buffers so that they can weather financial storms.
About us:
The International Development Design Summit (IDDS) is an intense, hands-on experience that brings together a diverse group of people, teaches them the design process, and then applies those skills with local communities to co-create prototypes to improve livelihoods of people living in poverty. During the summit, participants form teams and collaborate with community partners and other stakeholders to better understand a particular challenge in order to create a solution that fits the local context and constraints. At the end of IDDS, the summit organising team makes resources available to teams that have a promising strategy for implementing their solution. In moving the technologies from ideas to implementation, we aim to create real ventures, not just business plans.
IDDS D'Kar, Botswana 2015. Theme: Desert Livelihoods
IDDS began at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 2007 as the brainchild of MacArthur Genius winner, Amy Smith. In the last ten years, there have been 22 summits, in 12 different countries. This will be the first summit in Kenya and the first summit focused on solutions that promote financial inclusion. Kenya is particularly well-suited for this because of its strong entrepreneurial culture, its emerging tech sector and its history of being a leader in financial inclusion. Even though Kenya has seen impressive progress towards financial inclusion, there is still work to be done as the focus shifts from consumers having access to financial products and services to consumers deriving value from financial products and services.
About the participants:
At IDDS, one of our greatest strengths is our diversity. We look to accept participants from all walks of life as we believe innovation flourishes at the intersection of disciplines. For this summit, we will accept 36 participants. We are targeting to accept 10 participants from Kenya, 8 from Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda, 8 from south and west African countries, 3 from Asia, 2 from Europe, 3 from South America and 2 from North America.
Attributes of individuals we will be selecting will be, but not limited to, data scientists, software developers, product managers at traditional financial service providers (banks, insurers, MFIs, MNOs, etc), individuals working at fintechs, employees of the local community financial service providers, local community members, designers, financial inclusion thought leaders, university students (Embu, Nairobi and international), and individuals with a background in education and/or agriculture.
IDDS Lahore, Pakistan 2016. Focus: ICT
IDDS & its role in the broader product and venture design cycle:
Product and venture development consists of several steps to see an idea / insight emerge into a scaled solution. The process consists of generating insights, ideation, initial financing, incubation, a soft launch and scale. As the summit is only 2 weeks long, IDDS Kenya will focus on the ideation segment, teaching participants how to develop innovative solutions that both meet needs and have a viable business case. Given this focus, extensive research prior to the summit will be conducted to understand the local community context and the challenges and needs that exist so as to ensure the problem framing statements provided to teams reflect the community.
About the curriculum:
As a co-creative design experience focused on financial inclusion, IDDS Kenya curriculum will mainly target putting in practice the IDDS design process methodology and business development tools (drawn from the lean start-up methodology, business model canvas and more), and techniques based on the best practices and learnings from the field of financial inclusion.
The curriculum will cover the design process (60% focus), financial inclusion (20% focus), venture / entrepreneurship (15% focus) and behavioural economics (5% focus). Under the design process, problem framing, solution creation and product development will be taught. Under financial inclusion, background on global trends, payments, savings, credit, micro insurance and agricultural financial services will be taught. Under behavioural economics, human behaviour and biases, and IRR (incentives, rewards, recognition) theory will be taught. Under venture / entrepreneurship, the value proposition canvas and business model canvas will be taught and pitch elaboration and funding opportunities will be covered.
About the projects:
The 36 participants will be divided onto six project teams, each of 6 members. The project thematic areas will be dependent on the community challenges and needs but will likely fall into the categories of credit, insurance, payments, savings, agriculture and financial education.
Why are we looking for funding?
As a non-profit conference run in association with universities and the IDIN network, IDDS does not seek to make a profit. Summit fees are kept as low as possible, and any surplus revenue is spent on scholarships and travel grants for participants without sufficient budget for international travel and attendance. As a result, sponsors play a key role in supporting the summit and encouraging global, diverse participation.
