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Understanding the context:

Cameroon has a scarcity of small change to the point where everyday transactions can be challenging when you don't have small change. For example, for me to take a motorcycle ride to the market, it should cost 100 XAF. If I have a bill of 2,000 XAF or even 1,000 I could easily spend the whole day waiting for someone who could take me and reimburse me. (I learned this early on when living here when I spent 30 minutes with a 500 bill looking for a ride. I ended up paying double just for the problem of not being able to be reimbursed). So there are two options of what might happen if you do not have small change. 

1. You may be forced to overpay for items or services

2. Purchase other small things that you don't really need in order to help make easier change

3. You can sometimes find someone willing to sell you small change for a fee

Now, you may be thinking why is there not a better solution to this. How do people function? To answer--yes, there are a few solutions that do exist trying to address this huge issue. For example, many vendors are reluctantly starting to accept mobile money, however when you look closely at how much these mobile carriers charge for this service you realize that it ends up being pretty much the same scam as described above. Additionally it is common to form relationships with local vendors and establish informal IOUs when the change issue comes about.

Even in large grocery stores such as Carrefour (international French grocery chain)where you might think they should not have this problem, they have the following solutions: 1. Pay with credit card (uncommon for everyday people to have a credit or debit card) 2. pay with mobile money 3. purchase extra items at the register such as gum, chocolates etc, trying to make easier change, or finaly 4. they will print a paper based IOU (in my experience on paper that is very susceptible to fading if you do not use it quickly enough)

Problem Summary:

Under the current system of addressing the small change problem it translates into the following hardships for people:

1. Loss of time 
2. Extra expenses
3. Hard to manage IOUs (unreliable and hard to keep track of)

For businesses:

1. Loss of potential customers due to change
2. Exposition to fraud (exploitation of IOU)

Our solution:

Small Change Wallet will be a mobile app built in 3 steps on the Cardano Blockchain:

• Step 1: Create a native token, pegged to the local currency (XAF) which will serve as a means to collect small transferable change
• Step 2: Build a partnership model with microfinance businesses in order to have in place an exchange mechanism that will allow the user to convert their collective small change back into the local currency system when needed.
• Step 3: Design and implement a small change wallet that integrates a QR interface an leverages the Hydra vision of micro-payments to allow the users to collect their change into a digital coin that can easily be used to carry out future transactions.

Core Team & Roles:

Wada Cameroon Hub

• Manfo: Cameroon Team Co-Lead, Senior software architect & developer, 12+ year of experience programming, 3+ years in functional programming paradigm (F#, Haskell, Elm), Multilingual (French, English, Italian, Ngiembo)
• Nkalla: Senior software architect & developer, 12+ year of experience programming, 3+ years in functional programming paradigm (Haskell), Mathematics teacher (Education Systems Engineering), Multilingual (French, Italian, English, Mbo)
• Arcel: Senior Software developer in Closure 7 + years experience, Project manager, Multilingual (French, English)
• Megan: Cameroon Team Co-Lead, Central Africa Coordination Lead, Wada core team member (Education and Event Lead), Math & Physics teacher, bilingual (French & English)

Wada Network

• Wada Devs: this will be one of the projects which will be lead through the Cameroon Hub but will also leverage our network of Wada Devs that we will be training in Plutus and Haskell to support the development of our dApp. Also we will be creating a solution together with many inputs from the different Wada hubs making a pathway for this dApp to be implemented in other countries within our network as well.
• Wada Marketing Team

Feasibility:

Reference (Past Successes):

Wada has already established active hubs in: Ivory Coast (French), Ghana (English), Nigeria (English), Cameroon (French & English) and Democratic Republic of Congo (French). Through our Cameroon hub we are launching a Haskell and Plutus training initiative that will be leading project based learning throughout our hubs. This project is an example of one of the projects we wish to work through as a learning journey for our aspiring devs.

See related proposal for Scale-UP Cardano Community Hubs: Spread Plutus through Africa https://cardano.ideascale.com/a/dtd/Spread-Plutus-through-Africa/381332-48088

Budget:

• Research and Development: $2000
• Developer team motivation: $6000
• Marketing & Advertisement: $1000

Auditability:

What success looks like:

• Launch of MVP Dapp with 6 months post funding
• Dapp fully designed, implemented and deployed within 9 months post funding
• Hundreds of users signed up 3 months post launch

Key Metrics:

• 3 months: 1 partnered micro finance institution, stable coin created
• 6 months: MVP dApp small set of test users engaged
• 12 months: dApp version 1 launched and in circulation
• 500 accounts created within first 3 month after launch
• 1000s (merchant-customer) transaction within 6 months

Risk Management:

The main risks we foresee are: The local context not accepting and therefore not adopting the digital stable coin model. We plan to mitigate this risk by running intensive marketing awareness and education campaigns that focus on showing the multidimensional benefits (from ownership to availability) of digital stable coins to the merchant. This is linked to our wider Wada initiatives to spread understanding and adoption of blockchain technology throughout Africa.