Changa practice goes mobile

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A new SMS-based product, M-Changa, is taking the Kenyan practice of Changa to mobile phones.

M-Changa’s originators say thousands of East Africans participate in fundraising drives every day to pay for everything from weddings to school fees to community rehabilitation. This practice of “Changa” has been around for hundreds of years, and has now gone mobile.

After two months in closed testing, M-Changa was officially launched to the public this month. M-Changa will allow individuals to raise more money, from more people, in a faster, more efficient and more transparent way than ever before. M-Changa fundraisers will be able to invite an unlimited number of contributors, send automatic reminders to contributors, and automatically track all payments to the fundraiser.

M-Changa  founder and CEOr. Kyai Mullei says:“We founded M-Changa in January 2012 to create a product that successfully marries two distinct traits of Kenyan society, our culture of fundraising, and the Kenyan people’s comfort when it comes to use of mobile money.”

M- Changa allows people to initiate fundraising campaigns and send customized fundraising campaign messages via mobile phone to as many contributors as they like, as well as allowing fundraising campaigns to be extended to social networks such as Facebook and Twitter.