Access to on-ground data from Africa has for long been a challenge for many companies looking to expand, get information on markets, culture and population size among others. Advances in technologies like smartphones have however transformed mapping as we know it. The gold standard map is now digital because it is accessible, open data that can be repurposed by many agencies, organizations, and communities at once. But still, very few on-ground companies are actually paying attention and feeding this demand.
One such company is the Award-winning data services company Rwazi, a Mauritius-based data service provider with operations across 40 countries in sub-Saharan Africa. Established in 2018 by Joseph Rutakangwa and Eric Sewankambo, the company provides organizations with fresh, on-ground data from markets across sub-Saharan Africa to facilitate effective decision making.
In an Interview with The Afritechpost, Mr Joseph Rutakangwa delves into what Rwazi is all about, and the overall outlook for the African data industry over the next 3-5 years;
To an ordinary reader, explain what you mean by data?
Data can simply be understood as facts or figures. Singularly, you may say data is an individual piece of fact. Information, on the other hand, is a group of data that makes logical sense. For example, Information could be that China is the most populous country in the world. The data from which that information was derived would be 1,447,831,917 people.
Who is Joseph Rutakangwa? And who are you as a founder?
I’m a guy who loves turning dreams into reality. Today, my life is occupied with running Rwazi to make data from developing countries accessible while creating gigs for the unemployed.
What compelled you to get into data? And what motivated you to start Rwazi?
So I had many experiences; I could go back as far back as high school, where I was doing research in high school and online you couldn’t find any information or any detailed information on developing countries. So you can google and find information from Wikipedia any of those fact books from developed countries, mainly the US, UK and Japan and the likes. I couldn’t find any information from developing countries, and that pissed me off. But fast forward, some couple of years later, I was doing consulting projects for multinationals expanding into Africa and I was mainly the only African on the team. And I couldn’t get information from actual ground data from Africa. And back then, even currently, for organizations that are not our customers, the alternatives are to contact the ministries, try to get data from ministries. If they have that data, then you try contacting the Chambers of Commerce or Embassies and so forth. And otherwise, they would try traditional market research firms. But the market research firms, extrapolate, they don’t provide on-ground data. What they do is get some macro information and then use that to deduce what would be happening on the ground, which is not what organizations like the ones I was working for wanted.
In the end, I saw that there’s a big, massive need in this industry, especially for developing countries, because none is actually paying attention and feeding this demand. So that’s how I got into data. I was doing a lot of consulting work and strategy work that required on-ground data. After seeing that there isn’t data, I initially thought that maybe the problem is there is data, but then it’s not digitized. So maybe the government have data and maybe it’s on paper. So all we need to do is digitize it only to find out that it wasn’t there at all. And the work that needed to be done was to collect that data. So that’s how it was formed.
What is your goal at Rwazi? What impact are you hoping to make in Africa?
For us, the goal right now is to make data from developing countries accessible, so that organizations like these, whether it’s private companies, government agencies, NGOs and so forth can use this data to measure and track their return on investment when they expand into new markets to track the impact of whatever aid they are investing in developing markets and such for governments to track their spending and whatever projects they are running, how the return on every location is turning out to be and whether the assumptions are correct.
So the primary goal is to make data from developing countries accessible. And that comes because the way we harvest this data is by providing data collection gigs to young people in these countries.
The secondary goal that comes with making that accessible is to provide gigs to unemployed young people in these developing countries and by developing countries. I mean, not just Africa, but we have Africa. We have countries in Africa, countries in Asia and South America.
Right now we have more than 10,000 mappers. Our goal is to reach 10 million mappers by 2025 and so forth, 100 million by 2030 from countries in South America, Africa and Asia. And the impact, of course, ties back to the provision of gigs. So you have two sides when that is accessible. Every player, from organizations to individuals can now make far more accurate decisions because they have the facts from the ground, fresh facts from the ground.
And two, you have people having income-generating activities. So on the continent, in many developing countries, you either have a formal sector job or you’re completely unemployed, or you’re doing manual labour, which most people who went to college wouldn’t be up for. So we are providing that third option, which is getting data washing gigs, which are relatively easier. They’re not toiling when it comes to your physical demands, everyone has access to the Internet, they have access to smartphones, and are educated. So why not tap into that to provide data to organizations that need it?
Why Mauritius?
We established ourselves in Mauritius because it is a hotspot between Europe, Asia, and Africa. We have a lot of organizations from India and China and Singapore. When they are expanding into Africa, they establish themselves in Mauritius. The same thing happens with French companies and uber companies and so forth. The same thing is happening with African companies that are going into Asia. So by being in Mauritius, we are at the centre of welcoming all organizations that are working to expand into this entire continent to provide them with data that they need to succeed in the expansion.
And the same thing happens for African companies which are expanding into Asia this year, we’re starting to have Mappers in India and other Southeast Asian countries will be doing the exact same thing for African companies establishing themselves in Mauritius so they can expand in Asia. So that’s why Mauritius. And then you have the main parts, which is Mauritius tax policies are friendly to businesses, more friendly to startups. They have a lot of startup schemes that help startups avoid death which happens to 90% of startups within the first year. And they have a lot of tech programs for tech startups and so forth.
It’s a country that works very closely with the private sector to create policies, regulations and frameworks that help the sector side. It’s by far the best country to do business in Africa. No comparison. That’s why Mauritius was the pick.
What is the primary growth strategy that your business is relying on?
So we’re expanding using partnerships. We have partnerships with consulting firms, investment advisory firms and market research funds and so forth. We provide them with data, so that has been our primary strategy of growth, and it’s been working very well, super positive, so far. We expect to double down on that as we enter the markets.
What is your overall outlook for the African data industry over the next 3-5 years?
So the data industry in Africa is almost doubling every year. And what’s happening is you have a lot of the primary consumers of data, which are international organizations now operating in Africa or looking to operate in Africa, right? Why? Because they are more sensitive, they need to track, there isn’t a need for them to try to understand that when you make an investment, you need to actually track it all the way to the ground and make immediate changes to respond to the market changes in real-time, as opposed to local businesses. So local African businesses and governments, they’re a bit behind on that and require a bit of adaption to understand that it’s dangerous to do annual changes, like make a change every year rather than every month and every week. It’s dangerous to use five-year-old data as the market changes every week, every day.
There are a lot of risks that happen when you extrapolate because Africa isn’t one big chunk. So individual countries have different consumer behaviours, have different ways of responding to things like prices, sizes and flavours and so forth. And even within countries, you have huge differences among people of different tribes, regions, and so forth. So there’s an adaption that has to happen within five years. Let’s say by 2030, I would expect that African businesses aware at least 50% of them are where businesses from developed countries are today, and businesses from developed countries would have gone even further because of the data that they look for and what they can do is they have an understanding of the more data I get, the more I can out-compete my competitors in their own markets and create a better product and service for my consumer and my prospective consumers. So that is what I see in Africa, governments are further behind.
They would be influenced by international organizations that are providing aid when they are doing monitoring and evaluation and require on-ground data. Perhaps different governments can jump in on that. But it will be a slow shift. Right. So at the moment, the striving part is driven by international organizations harvesting data from the continent.
What are the main barriers you face in the data industry?
It’s adaption. So we have the entropy mappers. We are the first and only country in the world that’s a network of 10,000 mappers in 40 countries on the continent. They’re everywhere, they’re in villages, municipalities, cities, towns, everywhere. So the infrastructure is there, the tech is there. What we need is people understanding that because we have this infrastructure, it’s much more affordable for organizations to acquire data. The pool comes from; do these local organizations understand that you need to have on ground data to push your sales, to push your marketing effort to target your marketing efforts and so forth. So what’s happening today is local businesses are out-competed by foreign businesses because foreign businesses are quicker to adapt data into their strategy making. What our job now is to drive the adaption wheel. To get these businesses to start using relatively easier data sets that they can order and they find to make sense quicker lead generation kind of data, and then they can start advancing from there gradually.
So the main barrier is adoption, the understanding of the use. You understand the value in the use of having on-ground data.
How has the pandemic affected Rwazi? Have you had to adjust some aspects of your growth strategy?
It was positive because for us pandemic meant, foreign businesses, even local businesses, you know the default is businesses can never have enough resources, enough people spread across enough geographies to provide them with the data that they need. So they end up always extrapolating, which is misleading if you’re in a developing country. So when the pandemic hit, it was pronounced, that problem was more pronounced and then they looked for solutions and then we were already in the market at the door. So we ended up having more business.
The good thing is, our growth strategy was already the partner using partnerships to expand your market, which does not require having a bigger CM and having people travel across geographies to do business. So we had already been using a gross strategy that works in the pandemic. So we just went with the flow and doubled down with our strategy. So the pandemic was just proof that what we’re doing was absolutely relevant.
“Decide with Data”, could you possibly share any interesting success stories from your clients that show how data helped facilitate effective decision making?
Okay, so I have to mention it is the most obvious thing that data facilitates effective decision making. It’s too obvious. It’s surprising that people wouldn’t think that it’s obvious, but you can’t know what to buy if you don’t know how much money you have, that’s data, what’s the price, that’s data, where what you want to buy is located, that’s data. So it shouldn’t happen that someone asks whether data is needed or efficient or valuable or not. It’s too obvious people live with it, they are just not conscious about it.
So examples, I have plenty of examples; we’ve helped South Africans get their companies to fit in Mauritius by having data on which businesses went bankrupt during COVID-19 and which was running and with what payment systems and so forth. So they expanded and captured the market, first.
We’ve helped healthcare companies understand; we provide data on chronic diseases, this is self-reported data from individual healthcare companies, Canadian healthcare companies tapping into Francophone Africa is that kind of data and getting the business off the ground.
We have helped a various number of consumer companies, UK companies expanding to major African markets; Nigeria, Uganda, and the likes by having a direct visual map of the distribution chain of their competitors, having retailers that they tapped into their own network and started distributing their products.
We have worked with a Japanese company to provide clean water in rural Uganda and by tapping into households, that was household data, usage of clean water, access, price, income and all that stuff. And now their service is expanding. They do pay as a fetch tech.
So there’s a limitless number of examples that I can provide here. Here, the basics are that you understand that any decision you make is based on how much access to data that you have and the more limited data, the less effective decision. That’s how people end up buying fake, knock off products and so forth. That’s how businesses end up investing in the wrong industries because they don’t have data and so forth.
Who is a Rwazi Mapper? And what does it take to become one?
A Rwazi Mapper is an unemployed, commonly graduate, unemployed graduate who has a smartphone., access to the Internet is above 18 and ready to work.
We’re currently prioritizing University graduates who are over 18. In most cases that’s how it looks like industry graduates above 18 have a smartphone, have access to the Internet and you’re ready to work.
So when you sign up as a Rwazi mapper, there’s a whole process. You get an email brief. You get a notification when gigs are available in your area because mappers only provide data from their local areas and then you get to work and all the pricing of how much you get paid per gig and so forth is provided in the notifications. So as long as you’re above 18, you don’t have to be a University graduate.
We just prioritize University graduates, but you don’t have to be above 18 and finish secondary school. That’s the minimum. Finish secondary school, have a smartphone, have access to the Internet, let’s go!
What’s next for Rwazi in a post-COVID era?
What’s next for us is just expanding. So right now we are starting to build a network of mappers in India, Asia, we are doubling double on customer position in the US and Europe. Plus we are expanding our number of existing mappers in the rest of Africa.
