Financial inclusion at the bottom of the pyramid.
A national financial inclusion product for the 80% of Kenya's workforce that formal credit had never reached. Designed in a sprint, shipped on M-PESA rails, and now serving more than 27 million Kenyans.
- Role
- Design lead · led a team of four designers
- Platform
- M-PESA mini-app + USSD
- Users
- MSMEs at the bottom of the pyramid
- Scope
- Research · sprint design · design ops · cross-functional alignment
- Status
- Launched · live since November 2022
A Government of Kenya product for the people credit forgot.
Hustler Fund is a product offered by the Government of Kenya whose purpose is to assist MSMEs to have access to affordable credit, and micro-pension products as a means of promoting a savings culture among its citizens.
The target consumers are Kenyans at the bottom of the pyramid which accounts for more than 80% of the workforce and contributes over 33% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
The objective is to cushion them against economic shock and upscale their business.
“As a mama mboga, I want the Hustler Fund mini-app to be easy to use so that I can borrow and repay loans and save to build a future for myself and generations to come.”
Empowerment, security, and freedom from loan sharks.
The product had a dual mandate: provide financial empowerment and security to people at the bottom of the pyramid, and free low-income citizens from the bondage of loan sharks who had previously filled the credit gap at predatory rates.
That mandate had to be translated into a product that worked for a mama mboga with a feature phone and a salaried employee with an iPhone, on their first try, without training.
Leading the design team and aligning design with business and tech.
I was responsible for leading a team of designers, ensuring the alignment of design efforts with user needs, business goals, and technological constraints.
This role involved conducting user research, creating wireframes and prototypes, and collaborating closely with stakeholders to iterate and refine designs based on feedback.
Ultimately, I was tasked to ensure the delivery of intuitive, user-centric designs that enhance the overall usability and satisfaction of the proposed solution.
Eight people, one shared mandate.
A design sprint approach, under government timelines.
We employed a design sprint approach because of time constraints. A design sprint approach is a rapid, iterative process for ideation, prototyping, and testing which enabled quick turnaround time as the product moved from policy to launch.
Design thinking, six steps from problem to product.
Design thinking is a problem-solving approach that emphasizes empathy, collaboration, and iterative prototyping. The team moved through six phases, each grounded in stakeholder input and refined against user feedback.
Eight stories that defined the build.
User stories articulated what value each feature brought, and grounded design decisions in why users wanted a given functionality. They became the shared language between design, engineering, and business analysis.
Operational craft to ship a national product on time.
I utilised design ops to efficiently deliver the project by streamlining processes, collaboration, and optimising resources. The focus was on the operational aspects of design, ensuring smooth workflows and effective communication among team members.
From sprint to scale, and still scaling.
The loan often came in handy for those unforeseen costs such as emergency expenses, tokens, Chama money, and on numerous occasions, transportation costs to and from work. The product is now one of the largest financial inclusion deployments in Africa's history.
Latest public figures via hustlerfund.go.ke, May 2026.