When he started receiving money from the Malawi Government through the Social Cash Transfer Programme, Frank Mataka decided to bring a cash point in Mlezi Village Traditional Authority Njewa in Lilongwe.

Mataka could have chosen anything else, but he says he saw a great need in issues of sending and receiving money in the village.

"As you can see, we do not have banks here, and at that time there was no mobile money service provider around here. People would have to go all the way to the tarmac road just to transact," explained Mataka.

He said having seen that, he decided to open a mobile money shop in order to feast on the market that was readily available.

"So when I received the first and second chunks of money I saved K50000 with which I started the business, and when I started I realized that my capital was just too small to handle my customers," he continues.

He continues that most of the times he finds himself with no money to serve the people with, and this gave him a challenge to grow his business in order to serve the community better.

Truth be told, Mataka might have seen an opportunity in the community's need, but for the community, his business came as a savior because it cut down on the cost of transport and time they usually had to use when going to send or redeem money from their phone.

As Meria Maviko, a resident of the community, explained walking the 5 kilometers distance to find Airtel and TNM mobile money Agents was a challenge, considering that sometimes the money received could be a small amount not worthy the walk.

"Sometimes you would find that a relative has sent you K2000 or less and you really want to use it there and then, so you would have to walk all the way to.................for such a small amount," she worried.

Maviko further said the coming of Mataka's Airtel Money cash point relieved her and the rest of the community of the stress.

Currently Mataka’s capital is slightly above a hundred thousand Kwacha, a figure which he has realized through reinvestment of the commissions he receives from Airtel.

To him, this is a great achievement especially considering that the business has been steadily growing in the past few months.

Aside the mobile money shop, the village investor has also bought two pigs and a cow which he is keeping with plans to sale in the future in order to raise a huge capital for a parallel business that he has been dreaming of.

In his vision, Mataka sees a room in the front of his house opened as a hardware shop for bicycle and motorcycle parts and spares.

“As you can see my house is a long a busy road where many bicycles and motorcycles pass by, and so many times people pass here in search for a place where they can buy a part to repair a bike but because we have no hardware selling point around here they are all forced to go all the way to the same trading center they used to go to make money transactions,” he says, casting optimism that such a business is going to set him up for prosperity and sustainable graduation from the Social Cash Transfer Programme.

The Malawi Government introduced the Social Cash Transfer, a Social Safety Net Programme which targets ultra-poor households with no labour capacity as a way of creating a level ground for them to be able to move from poverty to a particular level of economic independence.

Story Credits: Sam Majamanda