News

Sauti Pilots the Platform

As a culmination of Sauti Africa’s efforts to date, we held our ‘soft’ – or test – pilot launch of our platform this past week on the Kenya-Uganda border town of Busia!

For those unfamiliar with our work, we have developed a mobile-based trade and market information platform to help enable legal, safe and profitable trade across borders in the East African Community (EAC). Building on the results of months of preparation, our energetic team spent the week in Busia training 40 Kenyan and Uganda women cross-border traders.

Although we began with just 40 traders, since then we have seen […]

April 2017 Update!

This newsletter comes on the heels of a busy month as we prepare for the soft launch of our platform! We won’t bother you with all the internal machinations of getting a company started, but we can assure you: it always takes longer than you initially plan and there isn’t a boring moment. We’d instead like to bring you our most interesting content. Read the latest on our continued efforts to build partnerships, engage with traders at the border, and forge a path to sustainability for Sauti.

Sauti Wins Palladium LMIP Challenge Fund

We are thrilled and honored to be named a winner of the Palladium Group’s Let’s Make It […]

Sauti and EASSI win Funding from GIZ and the East African Community

A joint proposal from Sauti and the Eastern African Sub-Regional Support Initiative for the Advancement of Women (EASSI) has emerged best out of the 100 applications in the prestigious EAC-GIZ Incubator for Integration and Development in East Africa (IIDEA) competition to win a generous award that allows them to advance their pilot mobile program.

IIDEA is a joint initiative between GIZ and the East African Community (EAC) designed to promote people-centered and market-driven regional integration in East Africa. Established in 1999, the EAC is a regional economic community that includes Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, South Sudan, Uganda, and Tanzania. Headquartered in Arusha, […]

February 2017 Update

We’re excited to announce new support to our pilot through the EAC-GIZ Incubator for Integration and Development in East Africa (IIDEA) and generous pro bono legal support from the Thomson Reuters Foundation. Also, please give our new Customer Discovery Report a read!

Sauti and EASSI Awarded GIZ-EAC IIDEA Prize

The joint proposal we submitted with our partner, the Eastern African Sub-Regional Support Initiative for the Advancement of Women (EASSI), has emerged best out of 100 applications in the prestigious EAC-GIZ Incubator for Integration and Development in East Africa (IIDEA) competition. IIDEA is a joint initiative between GIZ and the East African Community (EAC) designed to […]

January 2017 Newsletter

Happy New Year from the Sauti Team!

As we prepare to launch our platform, we are excited to have the results from our initial research and engagement with traders at the border. Entering 2017, we would like to thank our investors, partners and most importantly future platform users for supporting our vision!

Key Findings from Customer Discovery

Over the last four months, Sauti has been engaged in a process of customer discovery, involving both quantitative and qualitative fieldwork at Busia and Malaba border crossings. Through surveys, focus group discussions and informal conversations we have worked closely with the traders to develop a unique, mobile-based solution to the […]

Sauti Cruises to HiiL Competition Win

Sauti has been announced as one of ten winners in the highly competitive 2016 HiiL Justice Accelerator competition.

This comes after a rigorous selection process conducted by The Hague Institute for Innovation of Law (HiiL), which saw over 450 applications from around the world compete for part of the €160,000 grant funding available.

After a four-month selection process to find the most promising justice entrepreneurs, Sauti was chosen based on the strength of their team, scope, uniqueness and the ability to expand access to justice through a scalable, sustainable and innovative platform.

Sauti, meaning voice in Swahili, is a mobile-based trade information and […]

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Sauti Selected for the Hill Innovative Justice Accelerator Competition Semi-Finals

Sauti has been selected to participate in the semi-final stage of the prestigious Hill Innovative Justice Accelerator award for the most promising justice innovation of the year 2016 between 15 and 29 September 2016! These events will highlight the semi-finalists for the 2016 SME Empowerment- and Family Justice Challenge.

Each year, the most promising justice entrepreneurs compete for the prestigious Innovating Justice Awards. The awards are granted to the entrepreneurs with the most promising innovations, as selected by an international expert jury during the Annual Innovating Justice Forum.

The Innovating Justice Forum is an international event that discusses and supports innovative ways […]

Sauti is shortlisted in the HiiL Innovating Justice Accelerator!

We are thrilled to be shortlisted as a semi-finalist in the HiiL Innovating Justice Accelerator! Thank you everyone who supported us by voting in the competition. Looking forward to pitching our innovation at the Nairobi Boostcamp at iHub in September.

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Meeting Malaba’s Cross-Border Traders

Another day, another border. Yesterday we visited Malaba border crossing and met with women and men cross-border traders. As in Busia the traders here face similar challenges – rampant corruption and harassment and opaque and unharmonised policies. As their number one challenge the traders named the information gap they face in terms of understanding customs procedures and their rights as EAC traders. They also lack market information which makes them vulnerable to exploitation by middlemen. Their excitement about the Sauti platform was tangible and the traders were especially grateful to be consulted and involved in its development from the start […]