60% of female members are shut out of the digital market through literacy/barriers of language, while 40% are denied through post harvest losses. This inequality prevents half the population from part
Sambal AgroConnect represents the first voice commerce solution for Africa and an engineering feat that addresses the women entrepreneurship gap in agriculture.
Core Innovation: Our tool has a proprietary Voice AI engine that has been trained on 14 Nigerian and 10 international languages using farming vocabularies. It has the ability to understand accented voices, contextual commands (“I want to open shop”), and builds a full digital identity or profile, and marketplace using voice commands. It is easily accessible from a feature phone or smartphone using voice call services, WhatsApp, or USSD services.
Design for Equality: We turn the normal design paradigm on its head and did the exact opposite, that is,vinstead of expecting a woman to change to accommodate technology, we modified technology to suit the needs of the women. We are listening and speaking and assist with humans. We created a “Sambal Access” network of storage solutions to end the material loss and “Sambal Skills” to ensure a learning solution.
Impact by Design: Our system is designed to measure empowerment metrics such as income growth (40% average), post harvest losses, and digital footprint establishment. With over 5,000 actively engaged women users, over ₦15M of revenue creation, and confirmed impact in Nigeria, Ethiopia, and Zambia, our impact design demonstrates what happens when you build for the most excluded, with enormous economic power unleashed.
Designing equality.pdf