Kiva Update

It's been a while since I've updated the site. I've been crazy busy with Kiva, and things are going great. We've rewritten pretty much the entire code base, so when we put the new version up in a few weeks it'll be almost all new. It won't look a lot different but it's totally solid, and it'll provide the foundation for a lot of cool new features over the coming months.

Yesterday we signed up a new partner called Life in Africa. I would say they're my favorite so far. A lot of the businesses I posted yesterday are for Ugandans living in displaced persons camps - one was for a water tap business:

Ocola Julius is 52 years old and is married with 5 children. He is Acholi and is one of the many thousands of people who were forced to flee their homes in the North because of the war that has been going on for the last 20 years. His family lives in an Internally Displaced People's camp in the outskirts of Kampala called the Acholi Quarter. Six months ago Julius joined Life in Africa and has been an active member ever since. He started as a bracelet maker in the Invisible Children Bracelet Project but his hard work and determination quickly earned him a promotion to a sanding processor.

He has acquired a piece of land from the King of Buganda who has sympathy for the people of Acholi and who has set aside free land for them. Knowing that the people of the Acholi quarter have to go long distances to look for water, he has a plan to install a water tap on his land. The current water sellers who bring water in to this hilltop area are charging five shillings per litre for water which makes it very hard for the people to purchase water for their needs. With a water tap installed on his land, Julius will be able to purchase water for only one shilling per litre and he plans on selling this water for a reduced rate of 3 shillings per litre to his community.

Not only will this provide a steady income for his family needs, but it will also offer a valuable service to his community at a more affordable price than they can currently get. This will insure that he has a secure source of buyers for his water, and it is likely to have a great impact on those living in the Acholi quarters.

To accomplish this project, Julius is seeking a loan in the amount of shs. 800,000 ($475). He es-timates that once he acquires this loan it will take approximately one week to have the water tap installed. Below is his budget:

16 metal pipes @ 12000= each =192000=
connection fee to national water=300000=
labor charges & other expenses =200000=
building of small house so that the tap can be locked to avoid theft =100000=
The whole total is 792000=.

Based on his current income, Julius will be able to repay this loan in 12 months. Julius loves music and dance, and has designated the community impact portion of the interest he pays to support Life in Africa's Talent Discovery program.

A couple of things about this strike me as relatively incredible:

1. Running a water tap is a viable business idea in a third-world country. I'm not sure why I'm surprised by this, but it just seems strange. But I guess there'll always be a market for water.
   
2. There are people in Uganda who will be drinking clean water because of code we wrote. To me this is the only thing that really matters, and it's the entire reason I came out here in the first place.

Other cool businesses that went up yesterday: A peanut-butter business and a housing loan for Peter Ndelo.

I predict that these businesses will all be funded by the end of the day. One thing we've noticed at Kiva is that the African businesses go like crazy, whereas our Central American businesses usually take a week to raise the capital. There are a lot of trends that are starting to become evident now that we've got a more diverse portfolio, and it's interesting to notice the patterns.

Posted by flow Frazao on March 23, 2006 at 12:48 PM in Kiva/VEF | Permalink