Mouhamadou Sall is the founder and CEO of NIMA Codes, a Senegal-based digital mapping system for homes and businesses without formal addresses.
“Having and communicating a reliable address is becoming a focal point as more and more services are relying on it to bridge the digital and the physical worlds,” co-founder and CEO Mouhamadou Sall told Disrupt Africa. “However, the lack of formal street addressing in Sub-Saharan Africa does not make that task easy.”
To access the service, users first must download the app and register with their phone numbers. Then, they need to take a picture of the front door of the building to register their addresses with NIMA Codes.
“If you come to Dakar and wanted to come to visit, seeing that I registered my address – I’d just give you my phone number and tell you my phone number is my address,” Sall told TechCrunch.
The platform also offers a feature to reach people who may not be formally educated, ensuring that Senegal’s general population can be included regardless of their ability to read, write or understand numbers.
“Our approach is different in the sense that we’re taking into account the high unschooled population in Africa, which often have problems reading or writing words or alphanumeric code but are very comfortable dialling and communicating phone numbers,” Sall explained.
Prior to founding NIMA Codes, Sall held positions and/or internships at Polytechnique Montréal, where he received a degree in computer software engineering, Google and Nuance Communications.
Tags: Africa, mapping, Senegal
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