Nanofinance going digital
The challenge
There are roughly 1.3 billion unbanked people on the planet. Without access to adequate financial services, people at the bottom of the pyramid are trapped in the vicious circle of poverty. This causes unnecessary human suffering and loss of economic opportunities.
Our vision and mission
Our vision is a world without extreme poverty. A world where the most disenfranchised can live in dignity, freedom and justice.
Our mission is to work with Savings Groups (SGs) to help them get a better return on their savings and make their money work harder for them.
If you wish to read the executive summary of our action-research project and understand better our long-term strategy towards achieving sustainability, please download this document below.
What we do
Savolution is an NGO with a start-up spirit operating in the nanofinance space and serving people at the bottom of the pyramid trough the Savolution Platform.
Our long-term goal is to evolve into a commercially viable and financially independent social enterprise that strives to bring inclusive financial products and services to the extremely poor in order to support their savings efforts and their micro enterprises.
Our approach
We want to address the two main challenges for existing Savings Groups: cash surplus at the end of the annual savings cycle, and an empty box at the start of each new savings cycle.
On a global level, these Savings Groups have more than 100 million members and more than 80% of them are women. Moreover, in certain countries some of these SGs are organised into federations, which is also a useful group-of-groups mechanism.
Inclusive digital products and services tailored to Savings Groups and SG Federations will help them to generate higher returns on their capital and support their entrepreneurial activities.
Our story
The journey of Savolution began in 2017 in Burkina Faso. Fortunat Diener, then country director for Swisscontact, was managing a development program financed by the Swiss government which included a Savings Groups component. Together with Jean-Paul Kiendrebeogo, and with the support of Hugh Allen, they revised the SG component of the program using the Market Systems Development (MSD) approach – formerly also known as M4P or Making Markets Work for the Poor.
Working together with one of the largest financial institutions in Burkina Faso, they managed to train 10.000 VSLA members in 1,5 years – a 7-fold increase in the number of beneficiaries compared to the initial project target. The “Mara Panga” project was a great success!
In addition to the SGs component, the project also included a new entrepreneurship training component for female micro-entrepreneurs. Using this innovative method to create Savings Groups, Fortunat and Jean-Paul studied SG’s financial cycles in depth and came to the conclusion that there is room for innovation. By using a social enterprise approach, our objective was to develop additional products and services for Savings Groups that would allow them to increase returns on their savings and create a “self-financing project”.
With the idea of creating a group-of-groups approach that would use excess money available at the end of the SG cycle as seed money for SGs at the start of their cycle, Fortunat developed the architecture of the Savolution Platform and the corresponding business model initially for Swisscontact Services AG in Zürich in 2019.
In 2020, Fortunat and Dirk Lebe co-founded Savolution AG, a Swiss private shareholding company, as a start-up and spin-off from the ideas developed in the field in Burkina Faso and on the desk in Zürich.
As CEO and founder of Savolution AG, in 2020 Fortunat graduated from the Founder Institute Zürich, a Silicon-based start-up accelerator, and obtained a 300,000 USD grant from the Mastercard Foundation to implement a pilot project in Ghana within the framework of the “Savings at the frontier” program, in partnership with a local fintech company.
Unfortunately, the partnership did not work out and the pilot for the proof of concept never took off. But the founders gained stimulating local market insights and learned a lot of valuable lessons from their mistakes.
Reborn from the ashes in 2024, Savolution took the form of an NGO with a start-up spirit. Based in Geneva, Switzerland and incorporated as an association under Swiss law, Savolution is now following its new action-research approach strategy.
Our aim is to modify the business model using the lessons learned in Ghana and implement it to support Savings Groups and SG Federations, allowing them to make their money work harder for them. We are starting with an NGO approach based on grant financing, but our long-term objective is to evolve into a social enterprise that can sustainably self-finance through the services and products offered to our beneficiaries. Our philosophy is to use an action-research approach in order to guarantee robustness and trust.
The team
Fortunat Diener
Founder & Secretary General
Swiss international development practitioner turned social entrepreneur, with more than 10 years of experience in Africa and in-depth knowledge about Savings Groups.
Jean-Paul Kiendrebeogo
Co-founder & President
Accomplished consultant and technical advisor for inclusive finance with more than 15 years of experience across West Africa. Natural-born trainer for Savings Group formation and women’s entrepreneurship, Jean-Paul was part of the inception of Savolution’s approach and business model.
Ana Kravic
Co-founder & Treasurer
Systems thinker and strategic problem-solver with extensive international experience in project and programme start-ups spanning diverse sectors across the Balkans, Africa and Central Asia. Helps people to understand each other and find win-win solutions.
Armande Mahabi Nabami
Head of Research
PhD student at the University of Agder, supervised by Profs Roy Mersland and Bert D’Espallier, Armande specializes in the performance of savings groups. She is passionate about leveraging collective agency to empower marginalized communities, particularly women, through sustainable and inclusive economic solutions.
Advisory Council
Prof. Alfredo Burlando
Associate Professor of Economics at the University of Oregon and Development Economist with a strong focus on the digitization of finance and financial inclusion. Affiliate of the Center for Effective Global Action (CEGA), the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) and Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA).
Dirk Lebe
Dirk has a cooperative banking, regional development banking and microfinance background and has been working in the financial sector in Europe, Africa, and South-East Asia for more than 25 years.
Dr. Mitima Djuma
Passionate leader with almost two decades of transformative experience in humanitarian and development settings. As former Executive Director of social investment at Equity BCDC and currently as Director of resource mobilization and partnership at AALI, he is driving social impact in DRC.
Alegnta Mezmur
Alegnta is a certified social and behavioural researcher and business development consultant specializing in USAID contract acquisition, with expertise in migration and remittances across East Africa and acquisition support in over 15 countries.
Our Partners
Academic partner: HAFL / Bern University of Applied Sciences
Research partner: L-IFT
Tech partner: MiKashBoks
Potential local implementation partner: CONAVEC
If you wish to make a donation to Savolution and support us in improving the annual return on savings for Savings Groups members – primarily women.
The bank account of the Savolution association is:
Banque Alternative Suisse SA
Rue de Lyon 77, 1211 Geneva, Switzerland
IBAN: CH97 0839 0040 8304 1000 8
Contact us
Disclaimer: Savolution.org provides information for general purposes only and makes no warranties regarding its accuracy or completeness. Use this information at your own risk. External links are not endorsed.