Categories
Life At Arifu

The First 3 Months of a Fulfilling Journey at Arifu

The First three months of a Fulfilling Journey at Arifu

Faith Mumbi   |  Research Analyst

Getting a job at Arifu ushered me into a state of euphoria for the first few weeks after signing the contract. Throughout the interview process, I envisioned how great the opportunity to join Arifu as a Research Analyst would be for me to kickstart my career as a recent graduate. It was the perfect embodiment of a place where I would apply my skills and learn from highly experienced team members working across research, data science, content development, and technology, on exciting projects. In addition to that, I would be able to contribute to making a positive impact in society by informing day to day decision-making of community members on best practices in agriculture, health, business and financial management. Arifu is a  perfect opportunity to build my career in research while improving peoples’ lives. Suffice to say, getting the offer letter to join Arifu was a dream come true!

So what is Arifu? Arifu is an interactive chatbot that is positively impacting lives and improving livelihoods by providing training in agriculture, financial literacy, employment, health and business management via SMS, Whatsapp, Telegram and Facebook Messenger, for free. A merchant in Nigeria can freely interact with Arifu and learn about business management skills, improve their efficiency in running the business, and eventually increase their revenues. A farmer in Tanzania can learn the best practices in agriculture, and increase their yields and income by applying the skills learnt on Arifu. Health workers can keep upgrading their skills by interacting with content on the latest relevant medical findings, recommendations and advancements that can improve their practice. Arifu offers endless opportunities for everyone across Sub-saharan Africa to acquire relevant information that positively impacts their lives.

youth employability training initiative

My first day at Arifu felt like the beginning of an adventure. I was nervous and excited to start a journey that I knew would be enlightening, at times challenging, but certainly fulfilling! I was also lucky to have a teammate in the Research Department, Jeffery Ngugi who started on the same day. It was great to know that I had someone who started a similar journey with me in a peculiar time of the COVID-19 pandemic.

We went to the office together where we met a few colleagues in person given that the majority of people were working from home because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Everyone at the office was so friendly and welcoming and I immediately loved the culture at Arifu. This was further affirmed at a virtual team lunch that Jeff and I were invited to and got to interact with other team members at Arifu.

We were both worried about the challenges we expected to face working from home on our first full-time job. Would we get enough support virtually to be able to understand the company systems and adapt accordingly? How would we get to know all the other team members that we would be working with and build relationships? Our worries dissipated within no time thanks to the accommodative measures that Arifu had established and our exceptionally supportive Research Team Leads. We were first taken through an overall company orientation about what Arifu is, the various teams in the company, and how they work together to achieve a common goal. Our managers, Osman and Wafa, ensured that we were fully onboarded before assigning us our first projects. There was already a well thought-out plan of the onboarding process and our respective assignments. Our managers also organised inter-team meetings to acquaint us with the other teams that we would be collaborating with. Yes, this was all done virtually with impeccable effectiveness!

My main responsibilities as a Research Analyst involve analyzing back-end data that we have on our learners, designing Research and Impact Evaluation designs to investigate the impact that Arifu is having on our learners and writing reports that effectively communicate the findings to our partners and relevant stakeholders at Arifu. The findings and recommendations outlined in reports inform key strategic decisions of our partners and the teams at Arifu. An interesting project that I have worked on was a partnership between Arifu and FiBL (The Research Institute of Organic Agriculture). My role involved designing the research project which included survey design, alignment with partners, analysis of the data, presentation of the report on findings, and charting a path forward together. It was fulfilling to hear the partner assert that my presentation was insightful and gave them clarity on the solutions they should offer farmers. We found that Pest and Disease control was the most prevalent challenge among organic farmers. The findings informed the partner and the learning designers at Arifu about the challenges that organic farmers encounter and the training content that they need and prefer. This led to the creation of relevant content for farmers that will help them deal with challenges in adoption of or adaptation to improved practices for organic farming.

I am also working on a project that is a partnership between Arifu, Mastercard Centre for Inclusive Growth, and UC Berkeley University. This project is a research study by UC Berkeley researchers to measure the impact of credit relief and business training on the performance of small businesses. Arifu offers Jaza Duka merchants training on financial resilience to cope with COVID-19, safe borrowing practices,  getting stock on credit and business funding options. The merchants get credit relief in addition to the business training offered on Arifu’s platform.My role involves coordinating among partners, conducting data analytics on our back-end data of the merchants, and organizing and executing a complicated Reminders Schedule meant to prompt merchants to keep engaging with the content. I’m really excited to see the results of this project and whether business training has a complementary positive effect on credit relief programs.

Working together with a supportive and amazing team on such impactful projects is what makes Arifu such a fulfilling adventure for me. I am constantly pushed to be better while being offered room to make mistakes and learn from them. Our Director of Research and Impact, Osman Siddiqi, actively seeks to understand our strengths to foster them and our weaknesses to help us improve on them. He is sincerely interested in our career goals and is already offering us mentorship on career development. Our Senior Analyst, Wafa Masood Khan, is always ready to share her expert knowledge and skills, and supports us whenever we need it. Jeffrey Ngugi is still walking this journey with me and we are learning, growing together, and supporting each other. I couldn’t have asked for a better team.

At Arifu, I am learning how corporations that are based on a problem-solving ethos for social impact model can contribute to improving lives in society. I get to build my skills in research in different sectors from farming, to economic recovery for merchants that always provide new learning opportunities, not to mention working with such talented and experienced teammates. Arifu ideally aligns with my long term goals of building my technical skills and experience in data analytics while adhering to my personal value of working towards positively impacting others in society. I am looking forward to all the learning and growth opportunities that Arifu promises to offer in the future.

 

Useful Links

Subscribe

Join Our Mailing List and always be the first to know about what's going on with our organization.
© 2020 Arifu. All Rights Reserved
Categories
Life At Arifu

My Journey Thus Far.

My journey thus Far.

Jeffery

Jeffery Kang’ethe  |  Research Analyst

Prior to joining Arifu, I was working for an investment company but I had to resign due to personal reasons back home. During this period, as I tended to the situation, I decided to build my python skills and enrolled in an online data science program. Fast forward a year later, I saw Arifu’s ad for the Research Analyst position and after slight research on the company, I knew I wanted to be a part of it. Hence, I gave it my best shot and here we are. Since receiving my offer letter, emotions ranged from excitement to anxiousness and deep down I knew that Arifu was going to be a gratifying experience. Three months in, I still get overwhelmed by the excitement of being a Research Analyst at Arifu now and then. Needless to say, I was right.

My first day was filled with eagerness to dive into work. But underneath all the eagerness and excitement, I was a bit anxious as I was going into a new environment. That morning I met up with my colleague, Faith Mumbi, who was also newly recruited in the research department, and we headed to the office. As soon as I began meeting some members of the team the anxiety died down and I began settling in. The team members gave us a warm welcome and were eager to explain to us about different systems in the organisation. Later on that day we had an e-meeting lunch with the rest of the team members where they got to know Faith and I.

Living in Thika, getting a job in Nairobi meant that I had to find a place closer to the offices. However, for Arifu, and because of COVID, this was not the case, I would be working remotely. This was new for me,and I had my concerns. One of my main ones being how I would create a collaborative effort with the rest of the team. The transition was however seamless thanks to the thorough onboarding process by our team leads (Wafa Masood and Osman Siddiqi) which quickly erased my concerns. They created an environment where we could ask questions any time which went a long way in grasping details about the projects we were assigned to. Within no time, we were good to go and ready to execute our tasks.

Youth Employment Kenya

My main motivation to join Arifu is because it provides me with an opportunity to have an impact on the world. Understanding the socio-economic status of my country and continent, being in a role that not only fosters my growth but also improves the livelihood of others, was very crucial. And Arifu does this well. Arifu is a digital content and learning platform that is free for its learners. It offers training content on financial Literacy, agriculture, health, employment, and business management. And as such, it provides needed information to the low-income communities which translates to an improvement in their livelihood.

My function as a Research Analyst is to enhance, measure, and communicate Arifu’s value proposition to our clients and end-users to drive the company’s mission. This is done through providing statistically significant and valuable – meaningful insights that help inform decisions and facilitated by responsibilities such as conducting in-depth analysis on learner data, conducting and designing A/B tests to inform on the UX variant of the platform, survey design to measure impact and clearly communicating findings from analysis via reports. One of the most interestingly challenging projects I have come across is the BDS project. This project was a collaboration between the World Bank and Arifu aimed at increasing the employment and earning opportunities for targeted youth in the country. Arifu’s role in the project was to customize content on entrepreneurship and business management for delivery through our mobile telephone technology and report on insights from back – end data analysis. Being new, and this being the very first analytically intensive project that I was part of, I was a bit unfamiliar with a few details about the project and took a while to get my footing. Moreover, the project required a plethora of analysis to inform the final report but with a very strict deadline. You guessed it! I really struggled. Mistakes were made, big and small but after powering through we were able to get an insightful final report. Undoubtedly, a huge chunk of my learning experience at Arifu is attributed to this project. I have; (i) tremendously improved my statistically programming skills due to the various problems i encountered (ii) learnt that it is very crucial to put context to your analysis otherwise you risk losing sight of the end goal, and (iii) understood that data can’t speak for itself i.e. analysis without communication of actionable insights is futile.

From a macro perspective, being at Arifu has taught me alot. Firstly, the extent at which information asymmetry exists in my country and how imperative it is to bridge that gap. I am learning about the kind information that is needed but lacks, for different groups within Africa and beyond, how to efficiently deliver this information and measure the impact of the information in their livelihood. Lastly, I am learning how technology can be leveraged to bridge socio economic gaps between men and women in low income communities.

Pursuing a career in data science, Arifu fits into my long term goal. I am in a company that appreciates and strives to leverage big data at all levels to inform decisions thus certain to continuously build my skills in research. Furthermore, I am able to gain multi-sector experience due to the diverse projects that we engage in on a daily basis. Lastly, being at Arifu, I am surrounded by highly skilled individuals who offer tremendous mentorship and whom I am always learning a lot from. The best part is, I’ll be doing all that while having a meaningful impact on people’s lives. In summary, Arifu will be a special experience and I am looking forward to exploring all the opportunities that it will offer.

 

Useful Links

Subscribe

Join Our Mailing List and always be the first to know about what's going on with our organization.
© 2020 Arifu. All Rights Reserved
Categories
Articles Life At Arifu

An update from our CCO

MANDEEP BIRDI

Greetings readers.

As the new and first CCO of Arifu, I take immense pleasure in announcing the launch of our Arifu Whatsapp channel, which launched in early August and is continuously being updated with more and more content in collaboration with some of our partners.

Social media messaging accounted for around 40% of user activity among a vast sample base of 15,000 tracked apps and three different WhatsApp mod versions were among the ten most used messaging apps according to analysis based on anonymously logged smartphone activity tracked by Caribou Data’s research app on users’ phones, with their permission.

As of July 2020, WhatsApp has topped over 2 billion users. The platform is particularly ubiquitous in the Global South, especially in countries with unreliable internet and low average incomes and local entrepreneurs are not only using Whatsapp for personal messaging but also selling their products.

Source: Statista

As an example, I can order fish from a Mombasa fisher using WhatsApp and even though I tried to convince the merchant to consider an online e-commerce website, he politely declined on the basis that he has generated sufficient orders all via WhatsApp. In his own words “WhatsApp is already there,” Ricardo says. “So it’s the easiest way to reach somebody.”

I also foresee that with companies such as KaiOS and Safaricom’s, there will be a massive increase in the growth of smartphones in Africa. In recent news a few days old, Safaricom in a unique partnership with Google has launched a new product where customers can now access a brand new 4G-enabled smartphone by paying as low as KES20 daily for the devices. Safaricom will now give qualifying customers more accessible access to the internet through their world-first initiative dubbed Lipa Mdogo Mdogo in partnership with Android, Google’s operating system for mobile. This initiative will allow qualifying customers access to the internet and the world of possibilities through a smartphone that they can pay-as-they-use on a daily or weekly basis which will only increase the use of data messaging apps such as WhatsApp.

So in summary, I am delighted that we now have the ability for our learners to be able to learn through any of our diverse channels: iSMS, Facebook Messenger, Whatsapp and Telegram. We look forward to continuous innovation both in terms of channels as well as expanding our content library to keep learners engaged and create an impact for every learner that interacts with Arifu.

Useful Links

Subscribe

Join Our Mailing List and always be the first to know about what's going on with our organization.
© 2020 Arifu. All Rights Reserved
Categories
Life At Arifu

My 7 weeks since joining Arifu: Stephanie Pownall

It’s been 7 weeks since I joined Arifu and I’d like to take a moment to reflect on my experience thus far. Being a recent college graduate, I was overwhelmed with the excitement to get this opportunity to work at a cutting edge impact business. To me, Arifu offers an excellent opportunity to apply my academic knowledge and build practical professional skills. 

Why did I join Arifu you ask? Firstly, I am keen to gain some experience in the agriculture technology space as it helps me combine my keen interest in agriculture and helps me explore infinite applications of technology.  Undoubtedly,  Arifu was the perfect fit for me as it leverages the power of technology to bring relevant information to those that need it the most; vulnerable communities that are challenged by information asymmetry to achieve opportunity and earn livelihoods. As part of my BA in economics program at The Catholic University of Eastern Africa, I wrote my degree thesis on the correlation between training and productivity in the agricultural sector, specifically for smallholder farmers. The geographical focus of the study was Kiambu in central Kenya and through my research, I discovered that there is a significant information gap in rural areas compared to urban areas such as Nairobi due to smartphone penetration implying digital divide.  This insight and challenge made me more curious to dive deeper and learn further about some of the market based solutions that are potentially solving this issue. My ecosystem research led me to Arifu and I’m grateful to get the opportunity to work in the Business development unit as an associate.

Upon starting with Arifu and learning about its product and services offerings, I realised the importance of partnerships’ function at Arifu. Further understanding, these partnerships have helped us reach over 1.4 million learners/users across Sub Saharan Africa while providing a low cost and a highly scalable information dissemination solution for business partners. Arifu’s interactive capabilities enable our partners to gain insights and bridge the information gap between partners and the last mile. Furthermore, I had always hoped to work within a company that is driven by making a positive impact across the board in our society. Changing lives and helping people thrive! I wanted to be a part of that.

My first day at Arifu typically felt like one does when they try something new. I was nervous, anxious, a little scared but mostly excited and looking forward to getting started with this new journey. It was a foreign environment with all new people and systems to me. The highlight of my first day was knowing that I had someone new just like me, Andrew Thiong’o, whom I didn’t know much about but got along really well with. He was equally recently recruited into the team and the support we offered each other from orientation and the introductory tasks assigned to us aided in quicker adoption into the working environment . It was comforting knowing that I was not alone in this new journey or environment because we assisted each other in getting settled into the unfamiliar system.

As a BD associate my responsibilities involve assisting the team with  building technical and strategic partnerships. Specifically, my day to day job includes communicating with potential partners, providing information about Arifu, writing proposals and tracking work. Moreover, the position means interacting with everyone in the BD team and being of assistance wherever and whenever they need. Being assigned tasks in different aspects has personally been a great learning experience thus far. It’s taught me to be quicker on my feet, encouraged me to take more initiative when getting things done plus think outside the box. My colleagues have played a huge part in helping me learn what business development truly entails and how they manage all their responsibilities beats me!

I know that Arifu is truly going to be a wonderful experience as we go along and the learning process will be ongoing. Being with the Arifu family aligns perfectly with my goals to gain the necessary agtech experience, travel the world as well as help bring positive change to our communities at large. I’m excited for the future opportunities and I hope to make a positive difference in the world as my colleagues, as well as our partners are. A step at a time!

Useful Links

Subscribe

Join Our Mailing List and always be the first to know about what's going on with our organization.
© 2020 Arifu. All Rights Reserved
Categories
Life At Arifu

My first 7 weeks at Arifu: Andrew Thiongo

Getting a new job is always a great feeling. Your emotions vary from happiness, anxiety, anticipation and even a fear of the unknown. These were some of the emotions I experienced when I received my job offer letter from Arifu in May earlier on this year. From the onset, I knew that Arifu would be a great  fit for me and 7 weeks in, I have been able to appreciate how amazing the company is and the role it is playing in making the world a better place. 

Before we get too far, let me explain what Arifu is and how the company operates. Arifu is a digital advisor and content marketplace which can be accessed free of charge on feature phones via a short- code of 22744 (in Kenya) and on WhatsApp, Telegram and Facebook Messenger on smartphones. Arifu offers insightful and impactful content on good agricultural practices, financial literacy, business management and even youth employability skills, free of charge. We even have content on covid-19 which addresses signs and symptoms to be aware of and also prevention measures like learning how to make DIY facemasks and hand sanitizer.The content is action oriented and focuses on creating the desired behavior change amongst the learners who are able to utilize this information and make great strides in improving their lives.   

We also help our partners to increase awareness about their products and services. My manager @Ritika has an awesome way of describing Arifu as a Netflix of content because learners are able to access a variety of insightful information on different subject matters from our partners.

Reasons for Joining Arifu

I joined Arifu because Arifu’s main aim is to positively impact people’s lives through education. My educational background has enabled me to fully understand how learning new skills and acquiring more knowledge can help you achieve your goals in life. I also joined Arifu because I wanted to challenge myself as a business development professional and find ways on how Arifu and its cutting edge interactive technology can add value to businesses that have direct linkages with the communities. I’d like to learn more about how technology plays a role in agriculture, finance, energy and even youth employability training which is an area I especially feel that we can contribute a lot. Embracing digital learning through platforms like Arifu can help boost economic development in emerging markets such as sub saharan Africa, India and other regions where digitally disseminating  knowledge on good agricultural practices, business and financial management and other impactful information can help improve living standards for people in underserved communities. These are some of the top pull factors that got me to join Arifu. The next section will cover details of my first day Arifu, my responsibilities and how I think Arifu fits well with my long term career goals. 

My first day at Arifu

My first day at Arifu was a memorable day for sure. I had been eagerly waiting for this moment ever since I signed the offer letter which was immediately an hour after I received it. The day started off with an email inviting me for a team lunch and receiving lots of emails from the Arifu family welcoming me as one of their own. The team lunch had to take place virtually though, because the entire company was working from home because of the Covid-19 pandemic.  It was a lot of fun getting to know the team and also answering some of the questions that the team inquired about me. Some of the questions they had included what my interests and hobbies are and what book I was currently reading.  

What are my responsibilities

My role at Arifu is to help the organization generate more revenue and seek out more opportunities to expand learning to millions of learners. My specific responsibilities at Arifu involve assisting the team with stitching technical and strategic partnerships with potential partners, building and maintaining successful relationships with existing clients and prospects, attending networking events, conferences and webinars.  My function leads to expanding Arifu’s network through attending networking events,  writing insightful articles and tracking work. 

What am I learning?

In my first 7 weeks at Arifu I have been able to learn a lot. The work culture that the company has, encourages us to learn on the job and to also become innovative and provide solutions that can enable further growth and development of the organization. One of the things I have learnt about Arifu is that our services such as content based marketing, training and providing real time data analytics about our learners to our partners helps our partners to tailor their strategies towards meeting the needs of the target audience. I am also learning  about the relationship between technology and other sectors such as agriculture, financial services, employability, energy amongst others. Working at Arifu has also shown me that a phone is much more than just a device, but it is also a medium that can be used to share very insightful and life changing information. I have also come to understand that education and information can be a great enabler in the fight against poverty across the globe. If more people continue to embrace learning and implementation of new skills, then we can grow to become more self-sufficient and independent as well.

How does Arifu fit into my long term – goal?

Arifu fits into my long-term goal because the company has provided me with an opportunity to learn as much as I can about how we can positively impact the lives of people in our society. I always believe that in everything we do we should always strive to positively impact those around us and to leave the world a better place than we found it. In the next 5 years, my career goal is to grow as a  business development professional and help Arifu secure strategic partnerships with more companies across the globe that are looking to positively impact the underserved people in different communities. Arifu provides a platform whereby I can be a change agent and help to socially and economically empower people from low income communities across this wonderful continent and across different parts of the world. My aim is to do more to effect change through education because as a direct beneficiary of education, I would love for others to embrace and enjoy the benefits of education and Arifu provides the perfect way to achieve this goal.

Useful Links

Subscribe

Join Our Mailing List and always be the first to know about what's going on with our organization.
© 2020 Arifu. All Rights Reserved
Categories
Life At Arifu Partnerships

Data Hub Visioning

By Osman Siddiqi

Attending day long (or multi-day) long conferences and workshops can create a feeling of cautious uncertainty. The promise for such events is often about facilitating thoughtful collaboration and meaningful networking, identifying new knowledge, capabilities, or talent which otherwise may be missed, and, in effect, learn from and get inspired by like-yet-differently-minded individuals from really cool organizations. Rarely do conferences succeed at fulfilling these promises. 

At the Data Hub Visioning Workshop, held at the Radisson Blu in Nairobi, this experience manifested in spades.

Arifu, will be part of the implementing cohort attempting to reach farmers digitally with training content on drought-resistant Irish potatoes and poultry. The workshop was engaging, interactive, and highly collaborative in nature. We had the opportunity to meet with agronomists, digital advisory firms, public data product developers, as well as innovative policy-makers (such as Director Boniface Akuku of KALRO). This helped considerably elucidate the variety of thinking, shared goals, and possible pathways to achieve those goals in a highly productive manner. 

Organized by KALRO, MercyCorps, the World Bank , and Dalberg, the goal of the workshop was to bring in all relevant stakeholders under the One Million Farmer project to identify (in my own words): 

Vision and possibilities:

  • What data exists publicly and within institutions?
  • What data needs exist across institutions?
  • What data are institutions willing to share and in what format?
  • How can data-based collaborations drive improvements in operations and, hopefully in effect, improvements in the lives of farmers? 

https://twitter.com/OsmSiddiqi/status/1227545351437066241?s=20

Challenges and the creation of a roadmap

  • What concerns institutions have in sharing that data?
  • What are the risks associated with sharing that data to farmers and institutions? 
  • How can those concerns be alleviated?
  • How can personally identifiable data on farmers be protected?
  • What is the efficient path forward?

If successful in creating a data ecosystem, several efficiencies in product design and development, as well as individual organization hesitations in data-sharing, could be tackled. That said…

There’s lots of data on the demand for data

At Arifu, we’re big fans of problem, theory, and evidence-driven approaches to the design of solutions which can be scaled through market forces. The subset of what we know, what problems farmers face, what they demand, what data we have or data we can get, and ultimately, what we are capable of building and driving at scale offers the best possible solution design. To answer some of these questions we are dependent on leveraging existing data ecosystems, creating our own, and actively sharing analytics with our partners. This effort needs to go further in at least recognizing the following ways:

Continuously listening to farmers: rapidly changing agricultural context due to climate change begs us to be more agile in our design and testing of solutions along planting cycles for crops. In addition, it forces us to think about solutions that can adapt to the annual weather volatility stemming from climate change. Farmer voices across crops and rapid just-in-time data must complement the history of research in the design of solutions. 

Academic findings: summarized findings from the reams of academic research would add immense value to stakeholders if packaged correctly. As such, these summaries should not solely focus on the p-values and effect sizes on key outcomes of interest, which while immensely important, are hardly the sole value-addition of publicly available research. The summaries should highlight interim metrics through a program’s theory of change (for example, not just yield, but behavior change), the drivers and inhibitors of these measures (for example, what types of behavior change were associated with metrics of interest), and what might be ways to improve intended outcomes cost-efficiently and at scale given what the research has learned. Simply put, why did something work or not work and what can we do to improve outcomes at scale? 

(One example of a great summary is here. The powerful insights here still require probing, iterative experiments to understand how to operationalize the ideas, and creativity in solving the identified problems, but they are highly informative pieces.)

More is not necessarily better: the two efforts above should inform what data, with what quality, at what specificity, and at what frequency is necessary to drive results for farmers. Not all data is equal or necessary. Data that is demanded by our research teams is not necessarily going to solve farmer problems. In other words, it is quite easy to come up with machine learning-driven predictive algorithms through swathes of data, but it is difficult to create relevant and riskless solutions for the farming household. 

Don’t get us wrong, we love data!

Arifu believes that access to relevant information is a fundamental freedom for all people and it is a promise that has yet to be fulfilled by the advent of the World Wide Web. We also believe that engagement with our learners at scale with relevant information should improve the median learner’s decision-making capability and quality of life. Because of this, throughout our operations and research, we put our learners’ voices, our partners, and relevant data as central to our design and scale strategy. 

At Arifu, we’re excited to see how we can further drive quality of life improvements for farmers directly and by amplifying the impact of our public and private sector partners through partnerships like the One Million Farmer project, by leveraging existing research, actively listening to farmers to inform our design, and using the right data.

Useful Links

Subscribe

Join Our Mailing List and always be the first to know about what's going on with our organization.
© 2020 Arifu. All Rights Reserved
Categories
Innovation Life At Arifu

Introduction to Arifu

When we first launched our digital learning platform, Arifu, in 2015, we still had many questions about how our product should be designed to address the deep information gaps that exist globally, preventing billions from accessing relevant, affordable training and information to improve their quality of life. 

One of those questions was, “will learners engage differently with our product  if Arifu is introduced as a person versus as a platform?”. We saw major tech companies around the world asking similar questions and investing in their conversational AI personalities — Google Assistant, Amazon Alexa, Apple’s Siri, and so on — to make access to information more natural, efficient, and friendly and usher in an entirely new era of digital services. Might the same approach yield results for mass-market audiences in emerging and frontier economies including the billions who have access to phones but not the internet? 

The answer, it turned out, was “yes”. Our research with CGAP, Vodacom, and TechnoServe delivering financial education to rural Tanzanian audiences over interactive SMS showed that the content introducing Arifu as a person had between 15% to 25% higher interactions than Arifu as a platform. Subsequent independent research showed upwards of 400-500% increase in contributions to savings among farmers in Tanzania. With that, the Arifu platform became an interactive chatbot with one mission: to place information and opportunity in reach of everyone, one chat at a time. 

 

As part of that mission, we are excited to launch the Arifu blog, a forum that allows us at Arifu to share what we are learning with a variety of audiences interested in the application of basic and advanced technology for social impact and shared prosperity. 

 

Our upcoming posts will be categorized around the four intersecting topics of Innovation, Impact, Partnerships, and Life at Arifu.  Each category speaks to essential aspects of Arifu’s engagement with our stakeholders from our learners, team members, corporate and government partnerships, and the wider ecosystem. The inaugural post on our blog is by Arifu’s Director of Research & Impact, Osman Siddiqi, on the promising role predictive analytics can play in digital advisory services for improving livelihoods. The post particularly speaks to Arifu’s Skills Score, a set of algorithms for dynamically measuring learning and predicting behavior change among learners.  

 

We hope you enjoy learning with us and invite you to share your thoughts on our blogs. Please reach out at info@arifu.com if you would like to collaborate and let’s keep learning together. We look forward to keeping the conversation going.

 

Marisa Conway & Craig Heintzman,

Chief Learning Officer, Chief Executive Officer, and Co-Founders of Arifu.

 

Useful Links

Subscribe

Join Our Mailing List and always be the first to know about what's going on with our organization.
© 2020 Arifu. All Rights Reserved