BBS Burgdorf Team I (2018)
How to Strengthen the Economy in African Developing Countries?
Our topic for this year’s YES! is „How to strengthen the economy of African development countries?“. So, our job was to find solutions or suggestions on how to boost the economy in African developing countries. Here we specialise in Kenya. We looked for the causes of the economic problems in Africa and considered possible solutions
In Kenya, there is a good digitisation rate (≈ 90%), and about 90% of the people in Kenya are working in agriculture. We developed the idea „Ubatimu“, an app that will sustainably improve the agricultural education in Kenya.
Our idea – Gamify learning
The farmers in Kenya have the chance to simulate to be a local farmer. Because of GPS data, the app can teach the farmers about their type of soil, which crops they have to use and receive knowledge about pest control and the right irrigation.
Meanwhile, the users get an acre and a stock of money (stock of digital tokens).
The farmer’s job in the app is to select crops which are appropriate to their soil and vegetation. Besides, they have to choose if they prefer sustainable or chemical herbicides and pesticides. The selection of the irrigation system is nearly the same: sustainable or traditional.
The harvest success is calculated by the app and paid out in digital tokens or money, which is booked to the user’s account. These tokens can be used at the wholesaler to get discounts on real goods like seed, fertiliser, resources and pest control.
For the implementation of our idea, we want to cooperate with the mobile banking service M-Pesa.
Our goal
Our goal for the economy in Kenya is that we increase the prosperity of the country.
Because of the usage of our app, the Kenyans receive a better agricultural education which leads to more work progress and motivation. The productivity will be higher, and the Kenyan government has more goods to export to other countries. More exports mean less imports. All in all, the GDP is higher and the prosperity of the population too.
Implementation – Roadmap
Our next steps will be the requirement gatherings, and meanwhile, we are searching for sponsors. After that, we are looking for a hosting partner and start to develop the app by using click-dummies. In November we want to publish the first version of our app.
In the future, we want to complement our app with a digital market, which works similar to eBay.
Risks
Of course, there are some risks which we have to overthink, so we made a risks analysis:
Financial
- not enough sponsorship
Technical
- availability of developers
- availability of mobile smart devices
- availability of geological data
Social
- acceptance in social groups
- lack of time
We had an interview with an IT-Expert named Bjarne Bothe. His forecast about the time we have to spend on the development of the app was four to six months. The result will be free software for Android and iOS.
But for us, there will be some costs. In the Play Store we have to pay a one-time fee, and in the App Store, we have to pay an annual fee of $ 99.
We already found some possible supporter like TUI Foundation, the BMZ and M-Pesa.
Photo: (c) YES!/Kai Meinke
The Team
Hello, our team consists of 10 students from the BBS Burgdorf in Hanover.
We are in the 11th grade with the subject area economy.
Together with our teacher Mrs Köhler we agreed on the topic: “How to Strengthen the Economy in African Developing Countries? “. We think that African developing countries should be important for all western states.
Now we want to present ourselves:
Marius, 16 years old, is our team leader. He organizes our contacts to other schools and various organizations and speaks with our supervisors.
Lea, Fabienne and Merle (all 17) are the deputies. They help Marius with the project and are his right hand.
Our other team members are Alysa (19), Gizem (19), Alina (18), Carolin (17), Diana (17) and Franziska (16). They work on foreground tasks and add original ideas to the project.
We all are strong characters and have fun to engage for a “better world”.
With our experts and our special team spirit we will finish our project and reach our goal: To help the African development countries
We are happy to enjoy the YES-Projekt!
The team selected this topic
How to Strengthen the Economy in African Developing Countries? (2018)
Recently, strengthening the economy in African developing countries has become an issue on the political agenda in Europe (Marshall Plan for Africa). This is above all a consequence of the increasing number of refugees coming from these countries to Europe. Many of them come for economic reasons since the prospects are meagre for find a job that allows earning an adequate income. Foreign Aid so far helped little to improve the situation. The work could start with a description of the political and economic situation in an African country or a group of countries. Reasons should be identified what hampers economic development. Built on this, a proposal should be outlined that might help to improve the situation. This can be either a concrete project on a micro level (e.g. improving access to education) or a broader project involving more participants.
