Nigeria’s Social Lender Makes Regional Finalist for MIT Challenge

Social Lender, a lending solution based on social reputation on mobile, online and social media platforms, has been selected as a regional finalist for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Inclusive Innovation Challenge (IIC).

The Nigerian Fintech firm is the only Nigerian start-up that made the Africa regional finalist for the challenge.

Other finalists are Forasna, a Cairo-based platform for blue-collar jobs; Farmline, a Ghana based agrictech startup that distributes content to farmers and 10 other technology startups companies in Africa.

The finalists were announced by MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy recently.

Social Lender and other finalists will proceed to regional events in five regions which include United States and Canada, Latin America, Europe, Africa, and Asia where they will pitch their solutions to a selection panel of regional innovation experts.

According to a statement from 20 Regional Winners, four from each region will proceed to the Global Grand Prize Gala at MIT on November 21, where $250,000 will be awarded to each of four grand prize winners.

Co-founder, MIT Inclusive Challenge, Andrew McAfee, said: “We have awarded over one million dollars in prizes to the future of work entrepreneurs in four categories that holistically represent the solution types that are necessary to build an economy that works for all in the digital era.”

Social Lender is a Fintech firm that bridges the gap of immediate fund access for people with limited access to formal credit by harnessing a proprietary algorithm using social reputation on mobile, online, and social media platforms.

CEO of Social Lender, Faith Adesemowo, said: “We have been solving real problems for real people. We provide a way of accessing formal credit to users using their social reputation score. You can find several user testimonials on our blog and Facebook page. It is really touching the impact we have had on our users.”

She said Social Lender would continually use its own proprietary algorithm to perform a social audit of the users on social media, online and other related platforms and gives a social reputation score to users.

According to her, “Loans by Social Lenders are guaranteed by the users’ social profile and network allowing users to borrow from banks and other financial institutions based on their social reputation.”

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