Mirare

Mirare is a livestock marketplace app for Samburu County, Kenya, built jointly with Watson Lepariyo and Shikhar Mehra. The idea came out of a conversation with Watson about how risky it is for pastoralists to go to market: the nearest one is often days away on foot, prices vary widely across markets, and traders know pastoralists usually can’t afford to walk away from a bad offer.

Mirare lets pastoralists post animals for sale and connect with traders directly, so the two sides can negotiate before anyone makes the trip. We piloted it in 2020 with a grant from the Blum Center for Developing Economies. The current Android app is built on Firebase (Auth, Firestore, Storage) with a clean MVVM architecture.

Next step: a web version so traders and pastoralists with any internet-capable phone can use it without going through the Play Store. If the modernized version sees real adoption, the longer-term goal is a study of how lower transaction costs change pastoralist welfare and the structure of the livestock market.