Please describe your proposed solution.

The Problem:

There are a few related problems:

1. Mobile money providers (most commonly telecommunication companies) charge fees and only a small percentage actually goes to the small businesses that facilitate these transactions.
2. There are exchanges that allow you to convert between fiat and crypto here in Malawi, but the exchange rates are poorer than using mobile money.
3. There is untapped potential to provide painless on-boarding solutions here in African by mimicking understood apps and services that are commonly used here.

My Approach:

My wife, Elsie, owns a small shop in our neighborhood where she sells some groceries and processes mobile money transactions. I plan to work with her to put together a survey, and use a small part of the proposal funding to incentivize people to fill it out for free items (a 300ml Coke costs about 50 cents US here, for example).

Taking the responses to the survey and other sources of information, I will create a detailed report discussing strategies for disrupting mobile money with native Cardano solutions.

Target Audience:

Anyone who works on the development of Cardano wallets, stable coins, or exchanges could benefit from the results of this study.

Impact:

Small businesses that currently exchange mobile money for fiat could provide an alternative that's cheaper for their clients than current solutions (in most cases), as well as being more profitable for the local service provider.

How does your proposed solution address the challenge and what benefits will this bring to the Cardano ecosystem?

Why this belongs in the Catalyst Open challenge:

1. This proposal is for research that doesn't directly relate to development, governance, or integration with any specific projects.
2. We're asking for the minimum amount of funds.

Impact:

This is a study on ways to strategically compete with mobile money providers. This could increase mainstream adoption of Cardano in Africa, if this information is used by projects in the Cardano ecosystem.

How do you intend to measure the success of your project?

Success would look like:

• People finding value in this research and using the results in their own projects.
• Gaining insight from normal people here in Malawi.
• Improving people's lives here, by helping Cardano projects to better assess their needs.
• Increasing adoption of Cardano in Africa (a long-standing goal of our community).

Please describe your plans to share the outputs and results of your project?

What are your plans to spread the project’s outputs over a reasonable timescale?

• I plan on organizing my research and working on part of the report before voting takes place. (If you're voting on this proposal, check my progress here!)
• If this is funded, I'll lead a breakout room or two in after-townhall meetings to discuss what should be put into my survey.
• After administering the survey finishing the first draft of my report, I'll probably lead some more breakout rooms to discuss the paper and hopefully gain insight into what it might be missing.
• Then, I will repeat the previous step once or twice, before final submission.

How and with whom will you share the outputs/impact and opportunities that will arise as a result of your completed project?

• Everything will be made available on the linked GitHub page.
• Everything related to this project will be open source under either the Apache-2.0 or CC-BY-SA-4.0 license depending on whether it's code or documentation.
• I plan to make myself available for further discussion and collaboration after completion.

How do you expect to use the results generated from the project in further research and development activities?

• My goals is to provide good data in order to influence other projects to make the situation for Cardano better, here in Malawi.
• I don't personally plan on using this the results, other than to see how any aspects fit into my framework for decentralized knowledge management.

What is your capability to deliver your project with high levels of trust and accountability?

It's a two minute walk from my home to the place in Malawi where we will be issuing the survey. My wife is Malawian, so her input will be helpful.

I spend a large amount of my time studying and comparing complex systems and how they might be optimized to produce a better user experience. Most of that experience is related to programming language semantics, but I have been living in Malawi for more than 2 years now so I've had a chance to understand some of the issues.

I am asking for the lowest possible amount of funding. No more than a fifth of that would be necessary for the survey process. The rest will go towards personal expenses.

What are the main goals for the project and how will you validate if your approach is feasible?

The main goal is to do research and provide useful information to the Cardano community for the sake of improving Cardano's reach here in Africa.

The secondary goal is to assess possible strategies for using this information. Any team should be able to take the information acquired through this proposal and integrate it with their own project strategies.

This project won't be difficult.

Please provide a detailed breakdown of your project’s milestones and each of the main tasks or activities to reach the milestone plus the expected timeline for the delivery.

Milestones:

1. (First month) Get some community input during an after-townhall meeting, design a survey, and get my wife's help translating it into Chichewa.
2. (Second month) Issue the survey, analyze the results, and put together a rough draft of the report.
3. (Third and fourth months) Get some more community feedback if necessary, and finalize the report for submission.

Please describe the deliverables, outputs and intended outcomes of each milestone.

The deliverables of this project are:

1. Survey results.
2. At least two community discussions with some presentation materials.
3. A research paper.

The intended outcomes:

1. Gaining insight into the user experience of current mobile money solutions.
2. Getting feedback from the Cardano community about what info is valuable to interested parties.
3. People use the results of this research to improve Cardano's reach in Africa and beyond!

Please provide a detailed budget breakdown of the proposed work and resources.

Survey Costs:

• To print a 4-page survey and compensate people (enough to buy a Coke, or a quarter of many people's daily wage) for taking it shouldn't be more than ₳2.5 per person.
• giving the survey to 200 people would cost about ₳500 (1/30 of the minimum proposal amount.
• The remaining money would be enough to cover most of our basic expenses for 4 months.

(More compensation might be considered for people's time)

The rest will go to personal expenses for time put into this project, as well as covering some of my wife's business expenses.

Who is in the project team and what are their roles?

1. Elsie and I will work together to formulate the survey (both in English and Chichewa)
2. Elsie will mostly be in charge of handing out the survey at her shop.
3. We will work together to analyze the responses (Elsie will mostly help with translating Chichewa responses back to English).
4. I'll be in charge of all the analysis and reporting.
5. I may be able to get Elsie to participate in related group discussions with the Catalyst community when I give presentations.

How does the cost of the project represent value for money for the Cardano ecosystem?

The amount asked for is the lowest possible amount for a proposal. There is a lot of potential value if projects apply this research and doors open for small businesses here in Malawi, and elsewhere in African to make a better return while providing a more reliable service at a cheaper rate. Wider adoption of Cardano is better for everybody.