#DappCon22: Day 3 - Examples From The Field: Kenya - Lessons Learned, Hilde Latour

Transcript

yes hi uh Billy lives in a remote Village in Kenya he traveled five times to the German Embassy in Nairobi we wrote letters as bien nurses wrote letters and he was sent back over and over and over again his flight was supposed to be on Saturday and on Friday morning one hour before the embassy closed he got his notice of refusal yesterday Savannah interviewed him so we could you know share his story it's an emotional story but it is the most important story in this space because he

is going to show you that it we are able to reach the last mile but there's also some you know not so happy uh and it's not so such a happy ending so we do need your help afterwards but um really a warm Applause is Billy online foreign but you can give him a warm Applause anyway [Applause] so hello Billy thank you for joining us we have to improvise a little bit because your

video was refused to uh to come to Berlin but um thank you for being here can you introduce yourself please yes from Kuwaiti a in kisumu County Kenya and the founder of a rural action community-based organization that is in short ragbo yes and currently the chairperson of the same okay and can you tell us something about Kuwaiti a your village what kind of community is it yes committee is a village in kisumu county in Kenya and it is having a total of population

of roughly 2 000 people majority of which are children and most of them are peace and farmers and they depend on rain water to do their planting the level of employment in community a is roughly below five percent of the entire adult population is having one primary school it doesn't have an health facility and also there is no running lean water Billy what are the main occupations uh

in your village what do people earn from the main occupation is farming where they grow some crops and then they also keep animals okay chickens and goats and cows yes and because and they grow Maize a million to beans cassava yes what is the staple diet of people what do people eat as a staple food

we eat ugali ugali can you explain that the Maize flour okay ugali from The Maze flower and also use vegetables what what vegetables the cow peas there's a Vegeta we call the cow peas okay and the sukuma wiki I don't know that one okay so what is the main source of income for people as you say it is farming in addition to farming what is the what are the other sources of income people get

and how much do they earn the other source of income is those who are engaged in small businesses each in a day somebody can get like Kenyan shillings that is 200 . if you change it into dollars that is two dollars okay small businesses like selling vegetables what kind of small businesses are they selling vegetables selling ropes uh-huh and they're doing casual jobs casual jobs in terms of Labor right casual labor exactly okay okay and how much do you think a farmer would

earn I mean which will be after each Harvest Right yes because uh the we have a small farms yeah and because of a lack of labor they intended to do small scale farming that is only for food yes it is majorly for sub it is majorly subsistence farming okay okay okay not to sell in the market not to sell in the market okay okay okay so they grow Maize and then they consume right yes but they

don't consumption or maybe they sell it in the village at some point they do butter trade barter said Okay okay so there is limited availability of cash in the village right very limited uh-huh okay okay Billy can you just tell us how this project started this Mission possible project the mission possible project started in 2020 if I can record was August 2020 and when the mission possible came and they were able to be

decided from the term subclavia from the sixth subclamps of quality a so we identified 10 individuals to benefit from the ten dollars that was given by Mission possible to each individual we used something called the lottery we can't we can't hear you hotel is how it started yes we used Lottery to ident the individuals who are supposed to benefit from their money that was given by the mission possible

with these 10 people each subclan um identify one person and where there were a good number of people they identified two people so there are some two subclans that identified two more people that is a that identified more people and they used Lottery yeah so if in the attendance we had maybe 40 people present we will write yes only one one paper in the credit yes the rest will be indicated no and then pick randomly

and the person yes could be given the monthly basic income for a year how much did you give in the these 10 people in Kenyan money we were doing one thousand okay for one year that is one dollar or ten dollars per month for one year that is one dollar per person one dollar per person right ten dollars oh ten dollars person oh yeah okay yeah yeah yeah Hilda yeah so we started with 10 people uh 10

a month and then um at some point impact markets came along can you explain what's changed at that point yes impact Market came along and then the frequency remittance frequency change the impact Market was now giving people money on a weekly basis and they were giving seven dollars per week so in at the end of the month it means people are receiving seven times four dollars that is uh seven times four

is twenty eight dollars yeah month and then they also increased the number of the beneficiaries it was increased from 10 that we were initially having with the mission possible to 367 beneficiaries up to the time when we were supposed to onboard more who are interested to be added into the program yeah and they also used blockchain technology that was new for you and for yes they used the blockchain technology that is the first experience we had through the blockchain technology we

were using the ussd code initially they wanted only those who are having smartphone to access the money and we find it was not possible in Kuwaiti a because out of roughly 500 adults we found only 20 people having smartphones and these 20 people were not able to claim using their smartphone simply because of the level of illiteracy and the complications involved so there was some technical know-how that they were to be engaged to know so out of the 20 people that were having smartphone

only two were able to claim in a smart way using the smartphone and so finally they found a solution the blockchain they came up with the ussd card where everybody in the village was able to claim using the ussd card and having their future phone so this one made it very possible for everybody to claim provided you are having a phone and if you don't have a phone provided you having uh yeah yes we're having a SIM card for example if I have a SIM card and my

wife is not having is is having a phone then I can put my SIM card in her phone then I claim the money then I give her back her phone and have my money yeah and can we deploy it from the local m-pesa shop that is roughly maybe 50 meters away from us so the blockchain made it possible to reach the last mile yeah and even the people without a feature Stone because if they have the same card they could use someone else's phone to claim the money and then uh give back the phone to the person again can you name a few uh immediate effects

of the basic income in the village because of the unconditionality of the program we had we never gave them conditions just like the from the six characteristics of universal basic income we had a variety of impacts one of them is people who are living peacefully people were living peacefully with one another and with their families another impact is we we show people starting small businesses because the program must run for one year they were rushing said that when the program ends you find them having a sustainable businesses running on the another impact you're having is that

some people move to towns for example the youths because when they move to town to look for employment they were able to sustain their lives for the period they are in town so they said let us go and look for employment in the meantime the Ubi money from Impact Market can sustainers when we are still there another impact we had this um the rates there was the divorce cases and domestic violences violence reduced totally in Kuwaiti a we never had divorce cases for that period because the husband and the wife

were working closely with the available resources to do their businesses so that at the end of the program they meant to be stable some of them most some of them confessed of having benefited for the first time in their life sorry for the first time they got a regular income into it was a sad story that somebody at the age of 50 had never got a regular income so for the first time they were able to get a regular income in their lives then another thing those who are

practicing agriculture they were able to buy agricultural efforts yes and when they want to irrigate their Farms they can buy fuel and they confess that it actually helped them yes so seven dollars will be like seven thousand Kenyan shillings yes seven dollars is not seven thousand it is 700 700 Shillings Kenyan shillings okay yes and it brought a big impact since some reduced to begging introduced a case of uh

A Very Old Man from our area who is having a phone but people are not calling him so he decided to give one of the people the phone to keep and the person will claim the money on a weekly basis he would only go there to claim to get the money uh-huh we asked why should you have your phone because somebody can make your call he said no nobody's going to make me a call and if they make me a call please receive the call and then you will tell me what they have said but what is important [Laughter] yes so when they're getting every Friday

really yes some were getting on Friday some are getting one day some are getting on Tuesday like that so Billy one question I have is uh in terms of food consumption which is so basic for a human being what what happened with food people were eating different things or more or what what was happening yes from the experience we had from the shops around we saw businesses were booming in the small shops and some even started the places where people can eat

the some got a chance to eat what they were not able to eat regularly meaning there was improved standard yeah like you find the family you could buy bread now goodbye them fly with fly I would experience maybe eating meat so even the children's benefited indirectly from the money that the parents received so you mean the nutrition has improved exactly and everybody was happy yeah yeah I remember you telling me about

people have started to have breakfast now just to explain on that part we live in areas where meals sometimes people are not guaranteed of sorry can you tell again people are not guaranteed of meals for example somebody can eat supper it takes you to the next day lunch um so when they are able to eat consistently they were now very happy I have an experience of a girl who was to join University

and the younger ones were suffering because of lack of basic needs the children could go without food but because of the this thing they were able to eat regularly so hmm yes mm-hmm so and and the surrounding Villages Billy because I I guess you attracted a lot of attention with this project so how did the people in the surrounding Village react to what you were doing in Kuwaiti they all they were all streaming into

our home to be registered into the project and they wanted to be registered that they can also get the basic needs and also because sometimes somebody is withdrawing money from an emperor show seven and the neighbor is having nothing at all and then he's told the solution you can go to the homes of Billy Juma and then you tell him so I had a rough time explaining to them that this project is currently for Kuwaiti and we pray that one day it can go to other areas also yeah yes how did the politicians react to this

local politicians first they thought it was a a political tool but later they realized that it was a for Humanity oh and so when they wanted to influence people to vote for them using one dollar they realized it was not working because people were having basic income yeah so they will call on what can we do we must have a policy so we told them we want you to do this and they will adapt you want to water in the village and they say we will do the Water Project they were approaching Kuwaiti they would

approach it in terms of projects but not handouts what was the reaction of the clan Chiefs to this whole thing first the mobilize people they told people to cooperate and embrace the project stats income generating activities and avoid evil cases like yes because they have what it takes to start a small business yeah uh Billy how many churches do you have

we have a number of churches yeah what was their reaction uh to this program some were reluctant but later they accepted it as people continue receiving money yeah they might have been reluctant because of a lack of exposure yeah yeah but because of the initial project that was in the area they really embraced the project and they prayed in most of the functions why yeah yes I remember Billy in the early

days when we were Mission possible was doing this ten dollars thing I remember uh people in in our interviews a lot of people saying that if the whole village gets it it would be so nice and I remember you telling them that go and pray it will come and then that's how and it came uh through impact Market that entire Village got it I think that was a very uh touching moment in the village you know I remember in the whole in the big in the big Gathering of the entire Village uh you gave that speech uh it

was really very moving and then uh and how how many weeks did you get it consistently and then what happened with impact Market we got it for a number of weeks I can say we got it for uh some months then the money stopped coming I'm going to money stopped coming in the people are not people were not believe did not believe that it stopped

coming so continually trying to claim in vain but uh they did stop when did it stop it stopped when was that I think more than in May in May yes okay okay but you are still optimistic that it will come back even today they were asking me when they they were aware that I was to travel so they were having hope that from Germany they will get the basic income again and I told them to pray about it because

our God is a good god absolutely Billy absolutely uh do we have any more time Hilda or should we close it here yeah I think uh I think we yeah you have any more questions Hilda well Billy um yeah maybe because can you can you share a few effects so that's you know what what because people initiated a lot of pro projects yeah and then the money stopped did they get into like serious trouble yeah since the money stopped you have a number of impacts some people at the boat the chicken some

at the boat ship you will find they are now selling them uh before they could multiply so that's I've seen the serious impact I've also seen it affect those who moved to town some came back because they are not found a reliable job the other impact which is from the positive one those who certain small businesses they are still continuing only that their prayer was that the program continues so that they get boosted and get familiar with the environment yeah

so I told them we continue praying that it all works well we have it back because through Ubi that goes directly to an individual it's a lot of transparency in it there's a lot of freedom and uh there is a lot of hope that it brings on exactly okay we're working hard to um to yeah start it again thank you very much belly I think you will be here online uh to ask some questions from the audience as well and um

thank you very much and we'll see you thank you yeah that will be tomorrow I think I'll be available yes yeah yeah