Serving Rural Families

Bidhaa Sasa means “Products now!” in Swahili

Our mission is to improve the quality of life of rural families in East Africa. We deliver quality household goods to our clients in the rural heartlands, for whom we provide in-house credit, making modern products accessible and affordable.

" Since I bought my new Jiko I spend half the charcoal I used to spent. I recommended the Jiko to all my friends "

About the Project

Previously to founding Bidhaa Sasa’s David and Rocio had both worked increasing the access to cleaner energy in rural East Africa. Despite some modest successes, they both felt frustrated by the lack of progress the technocentric approaches often used to tackle this problem have yielded.

Technology alone do not seem to be the solution for rural families in East Africa.

Most families still use tiny kerosene lamps to light their homes at night. People travel long distances on foot to charge their phones in a shop. Women have little choice but to cook on the ground outdoors, with firewood they collected from ever-dwindling sources.

Women, in particular, who spend more time at home are tasked with most household chores like cooking, fetching water and suffer the most from such poor living conditions.

However, technological advances – solar systems that light homes and charge phones or efficient cook stoves that reduce expenditure on biomass fuel and smoke – whilst available in cities are not accessible or affordable to rural families.

Most manufacturers and suppliers do not reach as far as the “last mile” and consumer loans are not available to those who live off the land. Loans below $100 are not interesting to traditional micro-finance organisations, nor do they have the required product or distribution expertise.

With Bidhaa Sasa the founders are searching for a way to tackle both the access and affordability challenges and solve this distribution bottleneck many new and old impactful technologies suffer from.