Making Microfinance Mobile
A microfinance organization needs to update its databases in rural Zambia, but electricity is not always available and access to the Internet is rare. Fortunately, there’s an app for that. Or at least there will be, once a team of Lehigh students are finished.
Armando Berdiel ’12 explains that the team is designing a mobile phone application to capture the relevant information while in the field and to upload it directly from the mobile phone to the main database.
“Most people in the outlying areas do not have access to computers but do have cell phones, thus making this the perfect conduit for information transfer,” he says. “The text messaging function can be used to send the information to the main database.”
The students are working with the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Zambia, which provides small loans to poor people who do not have access to traditional financial services. To complete their project, they traveled to Mulendema Village to meet with loan recipients as well as other members of the congregation.
The students are in the computer science and business program, a joint initiative between the College of Business and Economics and the department of computer science and engineering in the P.C. Rossin College of Engineering and Applied Science. Along with the integrated business and engineering, it’s one of two programs that allow students to combine their interest in business with another field of study.
“I liked this project because it entailed actually formulating a plan, working it through with the team and returning to the client to execute the solution,” says Brian Godshall ’12. “Traveling to Zambia to accomplish this was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.”