Last week, following our ceremony of signing the MOU between Wakandi Uganda and Uganda Cooperative Alliance, we had the honour of presenting our strategy to the Prime Minister of Uganda, RT HON. Robina Nabbanja.
Wakandi addresses the challenges in the Cooperative sector differently than others. While we do have competitors selling IT systems, we don’t look at it that way. Our approach is to make the Cooperative grow and prosper.
1 - Digitise their members and data
We act as the Growth Accelerator for cooperatives. We do this by ensuring the cooperative first gets all their data in order. This is done by onboarding them to our digital platform.
2 - Move the transactions to a digital or hybrid channel
Many cooperatives are still working with cash over the counter. Our approach is a hybrid one; instead of only supporting digital channels such as mobile money, wallets, or bank accounts, we allow our users to engage with us directly through an agent of the bank we work with. An example of an integration like this is the NMB integration we recently launched.
3 - Start to create additional value for the cooperative
When things are in order, the cooperative and its members start their journey towards growth. We do this by, for example, bundling loans with credit life insurance. This is done by our partnership with Sanlam. Additional Value Added Services are being launched over the next months, and this is where the cooperative moves from being a small part of its members’ lives to becoming the financial centrepiece of their day-to-day financial needs.
Wakandi and Innovation Norway presented our thoughts in the meeting with the prime minister and are happy to report that she supports our undertaking. In Uganda, we will be rolling this out to the 10M+ members of the Uganda Cooperative Alliance.