Paper, filled in by the wrong hands.
The DRC produces over 70% of the world's cobalt, much of it dug by hand in a sector that sustains an estimated 10 million people. Banking access among artisanal miners sits at 1 to 3%, and informal lenders fill the gap on predatory terms.
The blockage sits in the paperwork. Banks need identity, source of funds and due diligence, and no shared registry holds that record, so it ran on paper filled in by a bank agent on the operator's behalf. The person answering was never the person who knew, and the easiest decision was always no.
Change who holds the pen.
KOTA moves the starting point: the operator registers themselves and submits digitally, in their own words. The bank receives a structured application instead of a stack of handwritten cards, and the operator gets a score that shows the path forward. The record belongs to the person it describes.
One engine serves two institutions, a commercial bank and a government-mandated commodity aggregator, each with its own vocabulary for the same record. The team set the direction. My part was everything the operator and the reviewer touch: the registration form, the score and how it explains itself, and the review flow between bank and operator.
Who It Is For
Two users, and what each one is blocked by.
A cooperative needs an account and has no record that proves it exists. A reviewer needs to decide and has nothing solid to decide on. Everything below starts from those two positions.
A cooperative that needs a bank account. Blocked by: no record that proves it exists.
A compliance analyst at the bank. Blocked by: nothing solid to decide on.
The Product
One file, read in one pass.
One record, filled once by the operator and read by every bank they apply to. Below: the file a reviewer opens, and the same bank screen at wireframe stage and at handover.
The Prototype, Live
Be the bank, or be the operator.
One record, two seats. As the bank, you see your applicants on a map, the evaluation list, and a file to approve, question or decline. As the operator, you see the same file from the other side: your score, the reviewer's questions, and the form to answer them. Switch sides from the sidebar.