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Article
A social network-based architecture for on-line RoSCAs in the developing world
Proceedings of the 4th Annual Symposium on Computing for Development, ACM DEV 2013
  • Gilles Kounou, University of Abomey-Calavi
  • Christian Akpona, University of Abomey-Calavi
  • Herve Ahouantchede, University of Abomey-Calavi
  • Rose Gohoue, University of Abomey-Calavi
  • Fatna Belqasmi, Zayed University
  • Roch Glitho, University of Abomey-Calavi
Document Type
Conference Proceeding
Publication Date
1-1-2013
Abstract

Rotating Saving and Credit Associations (RoSCA) (known as tontines in francophone Africa) are financial systems involving groups of individuals who put money together periodically and take turns to collect the kitty. They are off-line systems and are very popular in the developing world. However, they now face several challenges (e.g. geographical distance between participants, safety risks related to manual financial operations). An evolution towards on-line systems is now a necessity and this paper is a first step in that direction. It proposes an architecture which handles the participants of ROSCAs as end-users of a social network. The proposed social network accommodates poorly literate end-users who may live in areas with no Internet connection. It also integrates an on-line payment system. The rich cellular network connectivity that is commonplace in most developing countries is used to offset the poor Internet connectivity. Speech technologies (e.g. Interactive Voice Response - IVR, speech to text - STT, text to speech - TTS) are used to address the literacy issue.

ISBN
9781450325585
Publisher
Association for Computing Machinery
Disciplines
Keywords
  • Poor Internet access,
  • RoSCAs,
  • Social networks,
  • Tontine,
  • Voice enabled social network
Scopus ID
84893364586
Indexed in Scopus
Yes
Open Access
Yes
Open Access Type
Green: A manuscript of this publication is openly available in a repository
https://spectrum.library.concordia.ca/980044/1/ACMDev_ROSCA_Poster6_Glitho.pdf
Citation Information
Gilles Kounou, Christian Akpona, Herve Ahouantchede, Rose Gohoue, et al.. "A social network-based architecture for on-line RoSCAs in the developing world" Proceedings of the 4th Annual Symposium on Computing for Development, ACM DEV 2013 (2013) p. 18
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/fatna-belqasmi/23/