Nigerian innovator, Faith Adesemowo becomes the runner-up of 2021 Africa Prize for Engineering innovation

Nigerian finance specialist, Faith Adesemowo, is a runner-up of the 2021 Africa Prize for Engineering innovation. Adesemowo wins £10,000 for Social Lender, a digital finance solution that provides immediate access to formal financial services to those with little to no access.

Adesemowo and her team created Social Lender to assist more than 50% of unbanked Africans with the efficient and immediate digital solution for accessing formal financial services. Social Lender partners with service providers like banks, microfinance institutions, micro-insurance companies and agricultural input companies to offer access to financial services based on Social Reputation Scores. In 10 minutes, its proprietary algorithm can perform a social audit of users based on their mobile, social media and other online activity, and assign them a Social Reputation Score on a scale of 1 – 100. This digital fingerprint allows them to access credit, loans, microinsurance, farm inputs and other services.

More than 50% of Africans lack access to formal financial services. Most of these are farmers, traders, artisans, young professionals, small business owners, and students. Finance specialist Faith Adesemowo and her team developed Social Lender, a platform that provides formal and informal financial services, which has impacted the lives of more than 100,000 customers in Nigeria and South Africa.

Social Lender partners with service providers like banks, microfinance institutions, micro-insurance companies and agricultural input companies to offer access to financial services based on Social Reputation Scores. In 10 minutes, its proprietary algorithm can perform a social audit of users based on their mobile, social media and other online activity, and assign them a Social Reputation Score on a scale of 1 – 100. This digital fingerprint allows them to access credit, microinsurance organisations, farm inputs and other services. Members of a Social Lender user’s social network can also act as social guarantors or referees for users’ activities, which gives people who may not have qualified for credit through traditional institutions immediate access to potentially life-changing funds. The average amount borrowed is approximately 15,000 Nigerian Naira; for those with a Social Reputation Score above 30, Social Lender has a default rate of less than 7%.

Users can access Social Lender’s platform through the internet, SMS, USSD, apps, APIs, or partner bank ATMs. Social Lender ambassadors visit communities that do not have smartphones and help them access the platform via USSD and SMS services, giving unbanked people access to credit, savings and other financings that they may never have had otherwise.

Since being shortlisted for the Africa Prize, the team has attracted promising new investors by instituting a dynamic new communication strategy. It has also upgraded the business’s corporate structure and employed 500 new Social Lender ambassadors, despite the global pandemic’s financial impact.