WhatsApp and Mobile Money: Ameliorating Crowdfunding for Social Change in Kenya

Introduction

Social media and mobile money are household media that most Kenyans use as a method of communication. Mobile money is defined by Jack and Suri (2011) as a tool that enables its users to make monetary transactions using mobile phone technology. This research focusses on explaining how new media technologies (i.e., social media and mobile money) are promoting and bridging the digital divide during crowdfunding locally known as Harambee in Kenya, and their role in critical social change. The study also looks at the ease of adoption of these new digital media and the utility of weak and strong social ties. The target population is Kenya’s Kisii University staff and students.

Mobile money services like M-pesa and social media have become instrumental in organizing Harambee (crowdfunding in Swahili). M-pesa, which was launched in 2007 had the main objective of serving the needs of customers who did not have traditional bank accounts, who were not financially connected to other people, semi-literate and faced challenges with ensuring that their finances were safe and secure (Hughes & Lonie, 2007). On the other hand, WhatsApp, a messaging platform, has had satisfying experiences in that it provides its users the ability of indulging in synchronous communications. It also enables in the construction of desired social experiences of its users, by facilitating individuals who are at distance from the message sender to feel present in significant life events. This tool also supports them in collective life logging practices that makes it a perfect social media tool for communication (Karapanos, Teixeira, & Gouveia, 2016).

During the pre-colonial era, the principle of Harambee was present in almost every traditional society that inhabited the present Kenya. Each society formed cooperative workgroups where people organized themselves into common work parties, such as cultivating or constructing each other’s houses; clearing bushes, harvesting crops from the farm or teaching young people in the society about the society’s norms. With modernization, followed by globalization driving our social development, Harambee today relates to all activities that can be associated with community development, such as positive encouragement, construction of schools in rural areas, development of social amenities and fundraising events, such as crowdfunding in support of families to pay children’s school fees, hospital bills, buy food and organize social events, such as birthdays, weddings and funerals. As a modernization discourse, Melkote and Steeves (2015) look at this kind of modernization and globalization as models of economics and of social evolution.

I incorporated the task-technology fit (TTF) model of communication that was put forward by Goodhue and Thompson (1995) and the unified theory of acceptance and usage of technology (UTAUT) proposed by Venkatesh, Morris, Davis, and Davis (2003) to understand how social media and mobile money have been adopted and work simultaneously to help organize Harambee. I elaborate my arguments based on three factors that are considered important for understanding the success of social media-based fundraising efforts in Kenya: the Harambee spirit, mobile money and social media.

Harambee Spirit as a Force Towards Social Change and Unity

Harambee, a Swahili term that means ‘Let us pull resources together’, has been discussed by Ng’ethe (1979) as a normal way of life in Kenya where Kenyans support each other, and a traditional custom common among Kenyans as quoted in the Kenya Development Plan (Kenya Government Printer, 1979). The term Harambee was first adopted and used as a political slogan to symbolize people’s unity in helping achieve worthy causes in the society. Harambee is not a new tradition in Kenya. During the pre-colonial era, the principle existed in most societies where people indulged in activities that supported each other. Societies had cooperative groups working together and helping out as common work parties.

The Harambee philosophy is similar to analogous concepts, such as Harambee in Namibia (National Planning Commission, 2016), Ujamaa (a Swahili term meaning togetherness) in Tanzania (McHenry, 1979) and Humanism in Zambia (Kaunda, 1967), which are aimed towards economic and social developments. In many parts of the world, related concepts are being used; in developing countries they are used for rural and urban development activities and in developed countries they play an important role during disaster management. It represents concepts of joint assistance, combined effort, communal social responsibility and societies’ self-reliance.

Today, Harambee is no longer just about the concept of describing the community spirit but also describes all community activities related to development in the communities, such as constructing schools in areas that had limited access to these facilities, laying water pipes, as well as facilitating fundraising events (crowdfunding) and development of other social amenities (Gathuo, 2000).

Mobile Money in Kenya

Most Kenyans use M-pesa, a service that is provided by Safaricom (M- is an initial for Mobile, pesa means money in Swahili) to carry out financial transactions. M-pesa, which started in 2007, was targeted at communities that did not have access to banks, especially in rural areas and who were in dire need of carrying out financial transactions (Hughes & Lonie, 2007). During the launch of M-pesa, the then Safaricom’s CEO, Michael Joseph stated that, ‘M-pesa is the first product in the world that allows the unbanked, with no banking details, no registration, no bank account, no credit card, to do banking’ (Okuthe, 2010). Mbiti and Weil (2011) posited that the Kenya’s M-pesa has progressively increased attractiveness of traditional banks in money transfer and has led to vast changes in reorganization of economic activities, risk management, mitigation and family relations.

As technology advanced, M-pesa has become instrumental in carrying out a Harambee. Before M-pesa, people had to travel to the venue where a Harambee was organized to make their contribution. A vivid example of how mobile money has become a Godsent instrument to Kenyans can be depicted when there was a severe drought in Kenya in 2011. Kenyans made their contribution through M-pesa in support of the victims. This campaign largely used the M-pesa service for easier donations to support the people who were affected. ‘Donations could be sent to the M-pesa PayBill number 111111 at no charge to the sender’ (Mwangi, 2011).

Social Media

Social media which comprise blogs, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, WeChat, WhatsApp, YouTube and Flickr have changed the way we communicate and work (Clark, 2009). Gillmor (2004) states that social media have been experiencing immense growth rates and experiencing fresh prominence, not just in reshaping the lives of people but also as tools that are promoting democratic processes as well as driving critical social change as a way of revolutionizing the society. Focus on modernization under globalization has changed from focussing on a state or confined region to a global focus characterized by extreme connectivity which has been enhanced by modern institutions and the World Wide Web (Melkote & Steeves, 2015).

Individual funders who donate during crowdfunding using social media typically donate small amounts. This requires projects to be funded to have huge populations of funders to reach the funding targets (Belleflamme, Lambert, & Schwienbacher, 2013). Even though a substantial number of funders are essential for any kind of successful crowdfunding, having additional funders beyond one’s close friends and supporters can come in handy for donations and reward-based crowdfunded projects. A theory proposed by Granovetter (1983), called ‘the strength of weak ties’ that deals with studying the relationship between structure, the strength of social ties amongst friends and the diffusion of information in both offline and online social networks illustrates the strength of social ties in building social capital. Weak ties represent relations with distant acquaintances (Grabowicz, Ramasco, Moro, Pujol, & Eguiluz, 2012), while ‘strong ties’ is a term used to refer to relationship amongst close friends or relatives. These ties play a huge role in connecting close friends and acquaintances to form a triadic closure of homophily that reaches large masses with a common target.

One of the criticisms of using social media while carrying out crowdfunding is the fact that sometimes social media tools may magnify the ‘bystander’ effect as argued by Agrawal, Catalini, and Goldfarb (2015) and Mollick (2014). This may lead to potential crowdfunding funders withholding their contributions by assuming that others who might also have seen the request on social media would contribute, hence resulting in a poor campaign and thus unfulfilled project performance.

Exploratory Pilot Study

An exploratory pilot study that I conducted had several research questions:

How do WhatsApp and mobile monies enhance crowdfunding in Kenya?

Research Design and Methodology

To understand the effectiveness of using WhatsApp and mobile money during crowdfunding, a qualitative inductive research approach was adopted. Specifically, I conducted qualitative interviews with the creators of WhatsApp and mobile money-supported crowdfunding, the contributors and the beneficiaries of the same using Skype and phone calls as interview tools. I developed an interview question procedure with an understanding that additional questions along the way may emerge during the interview as the respondent provided experiential information. This study is ongoing. It is still in its preliminary stages. Six (6) respondents have been interviewed. I recruited participants through a snowballing sampling method and did not compensate them for their participation. The limitation of this snowballing sampling research method is the likelihood of having numerous versions of the same idea biased by the individual linkages of initial contacts and those they refer as additional respondents.

All participants were Kisii University, Kenya, creators, funders or beneficiaries of crowdfunding. Within the next 6 months, 10 more interviews will be conducted, and surveys of 100 project funders and creators will be carried out.

Measures

The semi-structured interview protocol was divided into four sections. The first section had items that asked respondents how WhatsApp and mobile money were enhancing crowdfunding in Kenya. In this research question, the researcher tried to establish a rough idea of how crowdfunding was traditionally carried out in Kenya and how it has evolved through technological advancements. In the second section, the respondents were asked to describe how weak ties and strong ties affect WhatsApp and mobile money-aided crowdfunding. They were also asked to describe if they thought weak ties and strong ties have any effect on the amount of money contributed during a crowdfunding event. The third question was a discussion on the preferences and differences in attitude towards social media and mobile money as crowdfunding tools. For the final question, the respondents were asked to explain in detail how digital crowdfunding has contributed to social change in Kenya. Based on their personal experience, they explained how crowdfunding has helped spur communities in terms of economic development and social change in general.

The length of the interview was 38 minutes on average (with the shortest being 30 minutes and the longest being 53 minutes). Of the six interviews, four were conducted using Skype while two were conducted via phone calls. All the interviews were audio-recorded, saved and transcribed for coding and analysis.

The advantage of using such a research approach is its ability to involve direct interaction between the researcher and the respondents. The strength of such interactive relationship is its ability to enable the researcher to obtain first-hand life experiences in providing valuable and meaningful data (Duffy, 1986). When the researcher and the respondent spend more time together during the interview process, the data will more likely be honest and valid (Bryman, 1988).

One weakness of this approach is the fact that its interactive nature between the researcher and the respondent may lead to a pseudo therapeutic condition where the researchers have difficulties separating between their own personal experiences and those of their respondents (Sandelowski, 1986), which results in subjectivity as posited by Cormack (1991). According to Bryman (1988) the most extreme form of pseudo therapeutic condition is referred to as ‘going native’. This is where the investigator loses cognizance of being a researcher and becomes more like the participant (Bryman, 1988). I slightly experienced this situation during the interviewing process since the researcher has a good grasp of how WhatsApp and mobile money complement each other during digital crowdfunding in Kenya. Going native was avoided by the researcher conducting the interviews together with his advisor who did not have knowledge of how the whole process worked and thus helped the researcher avoid contributing towards the discussion rather than paying great attention during the data collection process.

Preliminary Findings

These are preliminary findings on how digital crowdfunding is getting its roots in Kenya and how it is promoting social change.

Vitality of Mobile Money and Social Media at Kisii University During a Crowdfunding

According to Jacobson and Storey (2004), while looking at the economies of participatory communication towards development they posited that Networks for Behaviour Change (NBC) attempt to bring needed beneficial communications out into the public domain. Community-based activities and the media usually carry relevant messages that employ local language, customs and idioms that foster togetherness and yearn towards development and social change in the society as a unit. To answer my research question, how WhatsApp and mobile money are enhancing crowdfunding in Kenya, especially at Kisii University, one of my respondents said:

I would say it is a God sent blessing for the greater part of Kisii University. I will use Kisii University mostly because it’s the target population that I engaged in and use a lot especially the student population. These days it is difficult to be able to meet people hand in hand so the old-fashioned way of collecting money and fundraising using for example proformas where you develop a form and go around collecting money from people is becoming difficult because people are staying further and further apart. That has led to an invention, I think people saw the need for us having such a program.

With the world becoming smaller through digital media and people continuing to grow and migrate to other places, it is becoming difficult to get people to sit together and do a physical fundraising. Traditionally, organizing Harambee in Kenya was very tedious, time-consuming and costly. The convener of the Harambee had to identify a guest or two, then go to these people and ask them whether they wanted to be guests and which day they were available. Then, the convener would print cards to invite people indicating that this person(s) will be the chief guest and dispatch the cards to as many people as possible. He would then hire a place or organize a venue where people would come and sit, hire a public address system and organize food for the invited contributors. A master of ceremony (MC) was also needed for this event. People would participate in these physical Harambees with different motives. Some people wanted to be seen and noticed because some of them had vested interests like wanting to be politicians. Harambee was an easier way of meeting potential voters. Some, especially those in the government wanted to be seen as helping communities. Most often, people travelled because they were committed to the cause that the person was seeking.

With digital crowdfunding, you only need to create a WhatsApp group with a title, add friends from either your phonebook or friends of friends. Drafting a narrative that is appealing to the potential donors is also essential. Research has shown that an individual’s extent to which they become engaged, immersed and transported in each narrative affects the narrative’s ability to engage successive story-related attitudes and beliefs (Busselle & Bilandzic, 2009), leading to successful and meaningful donations.

Digital crowdfunding solves the cost implication challenges. The challenges of logistical planning, preparing cards and dispatching cards and having a guest of honour are other issues that are cut away. For example, another respondent said:

Title of the group for example, ‘fundraising for Dennis’. Say Denis is this man who is going to get a kidney transplant in India and the cost is this much. Kindly support and give them the contact number. And that’s all. People will send their messages, e.g. ‘sorry we shall pray for the family, we pray for Dennis’ and then they will send money as a contribution.

Weak Ties and Strong Ties

My findings were consistent with the study findings of Belleflamme et al. (2013), when they concluded that additional funders beyond one’s friend contributing network can be particularly relevant for increased donations in supporting crowdfunded projects. My respondents’ response confirmed ‘the strength of weak ties’ theory proposed by Granovetter (1983), by analysing the relationship between members in a WhatsApp group (strong ties) and those not within the group (weak ties) that were also enjoined to contribute during a crowdfunding. Cases of crowdfunding creators creating WhatsApp groups in case one of their own is financially troubled and adding their family members who in turn add other members too to extend the weak ties and go beyond the members of the group who know each other were mentioned severally during the interview. This, in turn, increases the number of contributors. One of the respondents said;

So, through those WhatsApp groups, after developing that link we just share it to those groups and encourage its members to continue sending to their other groups to which we are not part of. The network kind of helps us to move from one group to another. Since when I send to a group of 250 WhatsApp students, these students would be able to send to other different groups to which I am not a member, but they are part of, and they can encourage those ones to send to other groups. So usually it just goes viral as quickly as possible increasing the fund base.

Social Media Preference

Information Communication Technologies (ICTs) can help solve communication challenges that we face by facilitating real-time exchanges or asynchronous exchanges. This leads to the establishment of a bidirectional communication channel that operates well in dynamic conditions. In this context, data can be tracked and creating response loops are also possible. In addition, updating the data is simple for especially efficient usage (Garcia, Acevedo Ruiz, Moreno Romero, & Kreiner, 2013). Social media-related exchanges being flexible allows for asynchronous communication. This mode of communication allows for immediacy of response, hence the medium enables users to communicate with each other as if they are instantly messaging or chatting (Kim, Homan, Metzer, & Breese, 2015). Different social media tools serve specific functions more efficiently than others.

Choice and preference of a media outlet depend on the availability of the intended recipient or the interaction between recipient availability and social presence variables (Straub & Karahanna, 1998). If the technology and the task do not fit, then it may not lead to acceptance and usage of that technology. One of my respondents said:

In most cases, I have found that WhatsApp talks more to people that [sic] all the other platforms. I have tried Facebook but most of the time people will still want to inbox you and seek your number but sometimes Facebook is too general. And I have also used a few others like twitter. I have also used Instagram. I just put something small there. But every time I do WhatsApp the response is instant, so I find WhatsApp is a bit more applicable because you post a photo and a message, and it goes directly to their inboxes.

The respondent’s thoughts are in line with Tully’s (2015) findings, where she observed that perceptions of trialability and observability are important influencers in adoption decisions of the digital platforms. She also proposed an additional attribute—perceived flexibility—that should be considered in online communication among other innovation attributes as possibly influential in the adoption process.

Crowdfunding and Social Change

Crowdfunding activities for supporting students, staff and parents of students are common occurrences at Kisii University. Some examples are when a university student dies or a student’s parent, or if a student needs to raise money for tuition fees, or raise money because he/she is required to seek medication but unable to raise the required amount, or his parents are ill and they need support. These online fundraising techniques usually come in handy in helping raise the required amount.

Other than the university setting, this method exists in other parts of the country too. Even though politicians have misused it a little bit and made it their own personal way of reaching out to voters by trying to gain mileage from tragedies, if there is a problem somewhere people will create a Harambee to support. At the end of it, somebody will benefit from their fundraising initiatives.

Cases of students opening up and sharing their financial difficulty with at least one person in the office of the dean of student at Kisii University sparks the initiative of bringing together other students and staff to contribute in support. Sometimes students are desperate enough to the level where someone could commit suicide because they cannot afford to pay the tuition fees, especially if they think their parents at home have financial constraints and so they have no one to look up to in life. Just because they think all roads are ending, they can basically drop out of the university. According to one of the staff from the university, digital crowdfunding has resulted in a reduction in dropouts or students committing suicide. Using these platforms to be able to help them contribute and raise money and support them academically is playing a huge role in the career of the students and the whole community.

Conclusion and Future Work

Melkote and Steeves (2015) proposed that we are now in a society moving away from the modernization paradigm and into globalization and reaping the fruits of bottom-up model of participatory communication. This model understands the importance of collaborative and equal knowledge-sharing strategies and cultural indigenous knowledge perspective that respects individual cultures in promoting social change in societies. This model helps us in understanding how TTF theory explains how information technology (IT) may result in positive results on both individual and society performance and can even be more useful if the capabilities of this IT match the tasks in place to be performed (Goodhue & Thompson, 1995). This theory is complemented by the UTAUT to explain how mobile money and WhatsApp are facilitating efficient crowdfunding in Kenya and leading to directed change. As technology advances, people are moving away from the traditional way of crowdfunding where they had to convene at a specific venue to make their contribution to the crowdfunding. Digital crowdfunding involves creating a WhatsApp group with a title, adding friends, from either your phonebook or friends of friends and updating an appealing narrative to members explaining why they should contribute. One of the features that makes this WhatsApp crowdfunding standout is the ability to share group links to other members who are deemed as weak ties.

WhatsApp crowdfunding has enhanced efficient fundraising in Kenya. WhatsApp, being an asymmetrical model of communication, enables members of the WhatsApp group to easily receive messages as a group and enhance a one-on-one conversation with the members. It is unlike other social media tools where communication is public and may not be appealing to those who would like to contribute but would not like to go completely public. This method also offers an opportunity for accountability since, after the contribution, the treasurer usually updates the amount received to the group members, which is easier to track. This group communication also serves as a motivation to those members who have not contributed and helps to avoid the bystander effect. This enables people to contribute and send encouraging messages to the person or persons in need. One of the greatest achievements especially at Kisii University where this WhatsApp crowdfunding is commonly used is the ability for it to be used for recruitment, retention and for fundraising for students so that they can afford a university education.

Igboaka and Ha (2010) while looking at the role of ICT towards development especially in rural Nigeria found out that, the ICT has impacted immensely on the lives of the locals especially those living in areas considered to be rural to achieve rural economic development. Even though there are mixed opinions among scholars towards the role of ICT in general and the Internet in promoting development, benefits outweigh the negative outcomes. Some scholars argue that the Internet does not always contribute to drastic economic and social advances. But most scholars agree that Internet and the digital media now to a larger extent contribute to the ever-changing, non-static information dissemination across urban and rural areas in different societal setups.

A side effect to digital crowdfunding is the creation of isolation. People who used to see one another physically, talk and chat and laugh in traditional Harambees no longer exist. This technological advancement has led to family ties being broken and people moving away from a collectivist society. The price of efficient fundraising is replacing the face-to-face interactions.