Dukawalla: Voice Interfaces for Small Businesses in Africa
This addresses the challenge for small business owners in Africa who are mobile-first and have limited time, offering an intuitive tool, though it appears incremental as it applies existing voice and AI methods to a new domain.
The paper tackles the problem of small and medium-sized businesses in Africa struggling with data-driven decision-making due to a lack of suitable analytics tools, by introducing Dukawalla, a voice-based intelligent assistant that leverages generative AI to provide actionable insights, with deployment in Nairobi showing it aids in informed decision-making and streamlines data collection.
Small and medium sized businesses often struggle with data driven decision making do to a lack of advanced analytics tools, especially in African countries where they make up a majority of the workforce. Though many tools exist they are not designed to fit into the ways of working of SMB workers who are mobile first, have limited time to learn new workflows, and for whom social and business are tightly coupled. To address this, the Dukawalla prototype was created. This intelligent assistant bridges the gap between raw business data, and actionable insights by leveraging voice interaction and the power of generative AI. Dukawalla provides an intuitive way for business owners to interact with their data, aiding in informed decision making. This paper examines Dukawalla's deployment across SMBs in Nairobi, focusing on their experiences using this voice based assistant to streamline data collection and provide business insights