Sauti East Africa – Empowering East Africa's women-led SMEs to trade legally, profitably, and safely across borders

SAUTI EAST AFRICA

CLOSING THE DIGITAL INFORMATION GAP FOR WOMEN IN TRADE

Sauti East Africa empowers women-led small and medium-sized enterprises to trade to legally, safely, and profitably across East Africa’s borders.

WHAT WE DO

Our Services & Products

Sauti East Africa combines innovative technologies with proven deep expertise to empower women as forces of change in markets, communities, and households.

TECHNOLOGY SOLUTIONS

We develop technologies to measurably improve women’s access to information, business opportunities, and markets.

RESEARCH & EVIDENCE

We collect and analyse vital data to understand barriers to women’s economic empowerment.

Our mobile information service delivers real-time market prices, exchange rates, information updates, and trade procedures to traders across East Africa.

TRADE & MARKET INFORMATION PLATFORMS

Analyse, segment, and extract actionable insights on East African cross-border trade using our interactive data dashboard.

SAUTI TRADE INSIGHTS

Design, test, and deploy survey and monitoring tools remotely using our end-to-end mobile data collection solutions.

SAUTI COLLECT

Why we build technologies for women in trade

Using technology to empower women-led businesses has ripple effects that can help create lasting change for households, communities, and market systems. That’s why we put women as traders, producers, and customers at the centre of our products, services and delivery models.

Learn more about our approach.

Featured case studies

We have reached over 75,000 users in “low-technology” environments and conducted gender-sensitive research and technology design in six African countries.

Market Monitoring and Predictive Modelling Project: Sauti’s Work with the Danish Refugee Council

Sauti has been working on a market monitoring and predictive modelling project with the Danish Refugee Council (DRC) in order to improve access to previously-hard-to-gather market prices. As part of this project, Sauti also successfully piloted a USSD virtual marketplace to improve market linkages of traditionally excluded businesses.

Global Integrity’s Anti-Corruption Evidence Programme RCTs in Kenya

Since 2019, via Sauti Collect, Sauti has been able to offer an end-to-end USSD mobile data collection solution, from survey design and testing, to survey deployment and monitoring of incoming results – all from one user-friendly dashboard.

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News & Updates

Sauti’s Quarterly User Insights Report: January – March 2022

In this quarterly report, we have analysed user growth and interactions with the Sauti market and trade information platforms in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, and Rwanda.

2022 Q1 saw 6,474 new users access all our regional platforms. Our Kenyan platform saw the majority of growth with 5657 new users, followed by Tanzania with 410 new users. Since our Q3-Q4 2021 Report, trade within domestic markets has increased in Tanzania by 5 percentage points to 86% while the country’s cross-border trade has decreased by 5 percentage points up to 14%.

20 April 2022

Smartphone Adoption Among Traders in Kenya and Uganda

Despite the growth of smartphones among Africa’s urban populations, traders often operate with basic feature phones. This report details findings from Sauti East Africa’s surveys of smartphone access among Kenyan and Ugandan traders. 4,136 participants were surveyed in Kenya and 1,334 in Uganda. Participants were selected from users of Sauti’s market and trade information platform.

10 March 2022