My Work

My working partner asked me to post on their blog, and I thought I'd add it to my own too. There is some overlap, but it summarizes things a little.


Hi, I’m Ben Campbell, a volunteer for the NGO Engineers Without Borders Canada. I’ve been working with MTZL and Dunavant since the end of March and it has been an absolute whirlwind! I was just going to write about paying Dunavant's distributors commissions because we just finished the first batch on Monday, but there is so many other things to talk about that I thought it would be a shame to leave them out.

The first project I worked on was setting up an online payment system for Dunavant to use when buying their cotton crop. Without giving too much away, the advantage was, as with many things, that MTZL made their payments “safer, faster, easier”. Not to say that at times it wasn’t slow and difficult! The other thing that we did was set up their rural offices, 3 schools and one coop as MTZL agents. This was such a challenge because it had never been done before and was in places that were up to 2.5hours by bumpy village road from the tarmac. After one day of sensitizing farmers in Msoro, Edwin and I rode to Katete in the back of a Toyota Hilux. It was 18:30 when we started off and as soon as we got in the back of the van, it started raining! The “road” was very narrow with elephant grass on both sides and as soon as the grass got wet, it leaned onto the road, which meant that for the next 2.5hrs Edwin and I were being poured on with rain, hit in the face with grass and freezing cold. The next day I developed a very serious rash in reaction to the grass and the right side of my body was incredibly itchy for the following week!

Despite all of those “field worker” troubles, there were some big successes. We processed hundreds of millions of Kwacha worth of farmer payments, set up 8 successful rural agents, a school (the famous St. Lukes in Msoro next to the Cathedral) and signed up lots of farmers for MaKwacha accounts. Two of the sheds went on to be the top sellers of air time in all of Zambia! A personal highlight for me was visiting the Mgubudu shed and meeting a farmer that used to have to travel all the way to Petauke every school term to pay his school fees. It took him 2 days and cost k150,000 round trip to do this and his school fees were only k150,000. Now he can send a money transfer from the Dunavant shed for only k8,000!

Another highlight was filling in for Edwin at his Champion shop one day and a gr.10 schoolboy came and deposited k20,000 into his personal account. The new balance was k40,000. I asked him why he was depositing the money, thinking it was for buying talktime or sending to a relative, but he just replied “I’m saving for my future”. This was a real inspiration because he was thoughtful enough to save and not just waste his money on daily things. He wouldn’t be able to save such small amounts if it were not for Mobile Transactions.

My last highlight has been getting to know all of the staff of Mobile Transactions over these months.

The head office staff, who are always working so hard. We share an office with Dunavant, which keeps regular office hours. The last staff from our office show up for work before most of the Dunavant staff come and our first staff to go home goes home after all the Dunavant staff go home. The security guard gets mad at us for making him stay so late before he’s able to lock up the building. Our staff have “learning lunches” which means they eat while working and discussing MTZL, and often people just get take away and bring it back to the office to eat while working. The last practice, although demonstrating hard work, I’m not too happy with, because it promotes our good looking young staff to eat really unhealthy foods!

The local staff, Michael, Msozi , Alex and Edwin have been such an inspiration to work with! Being mostly field staff, they are willing to be anywhere anytime, whether it’s on the back of a dirtbike on their way to some remote area at 0500 or get in the back of a van at 2100 for a 3 hour journey home. They can think on their feet. They see a problem, make a solution and execute it and before you even know what’s going on they’re explaining the solution to you!!
I guess it’s the people, not the systems that keeps me motivated. If it’s Mobile Transactions helping rural farmers or just our own staff keeping me motivated, it’s always the people!