325 Market Garden’s stay-at-home marketplace app

Date: 2018
Designed by: Institute for Social Transformation
Credit: WORLD ECONOMIC FORUM


The Ugandan charity app Market Garden, which aims to reduce the risk of large crowds congregating in market places, is being used to fight COVID-19. Developed by the Institute for Social Transformation in 2018, the app allows women in the capital, Kampala, to sell goods from their homes and arrange motorcycle taxi deliveries to customers. The women who are registered to sell their products via the app are paid digitally which also reduces the risk of transmitting the virus as physical cash is not exchanged face-to-face. Susan Tafumba, a groundnuts vendor from Kampala's Nakawa market whose sales rose over lockdown, told WORLD ECONOMIC FORUM that, ‘With this coronavirus people are (staying home), so it is to our advantage that we are able to supply them the goods to their homes.’