Lilian Makoi and Agness Mollel built MipangoApp, an AI-powered tool to improve financial literacy and digital inclusion for Tanzanians.
MipangoApp began as a simple conversation between two Tanzanian women who were tired of watching their income slip through their fingers with no real explanation. When Lilian Makoi and her longtime friend, Agness Mollel, sat down to assess their personal spending habits, they expected to find individual gaps. Instead, they discovered a widespread problem. Their friends and relatives admitted to the same frustrations – poor control over expenses, inconsistent savings, and no structured knowledge of financial planning.
Beyond that, most available personal finance tools required English and felt disconnected from everyday Tanzanian life. That shared frustration became the foundation for MipangoApp, now arguably one of the most culturally grounded fintech innovations in East Africa.
The two founders combined their strengths to push the idea forward. Lilian Makoi brought more than a decade of experience in technology and entrepreneurship, shaped through ventures like Jamii Africa, her mobile micro-health insurance solution that had already reached over 8,000 low-income families in Tanzania.
On the other hand, Agness Mollel, a trained lawyer with strong operational instincts, became the engine behind Mipango’s legal, structural, and administrative direction. They sketched a prototype, convinced a developer to help them build it, and eventually created an MVP (minimum viable product) that would evolve into a fully fledged AI-enabled personal finance platform.
MipangoApp, established under Mipango Fintech Ltd in 2020, was designed from day one to serve Tanzania’s youth and women – two groups historically underserved by formal financial institutions. The app teaches financial literacy in Kiswahili, making money management accessible to people who had long viewed budgeting as a complicated or foreign task.
Users can track income and expenses, set financial goals, manage multiple wallets, and analyse their spending patterns. The AI engine studies their habits and offers tailored financial advice, recommendations, and nudges that guide users toward better decision-making.
One of the platform’s most notable features is its digitisation of traditional ROSCAs, widely known as merry-go-round savings groups. Millions of Africans depend on these informal savings circles, yet mismanagement, fraud, and transparency issues often undermine trust.
MipangoApp redesigned this system by allowing users to join digital savings groups where contributions and payouts are handled securely through mobile money or bank accounts. Its partnership with CRDB Bank strengthens accountability and ensures timely payouts, while Sharia-compliant structures broaden its reach among communities that prefer Islamic financial principles.
As the platform grows, it is expanding into credit scoring and loan offerings that rely on user behaviour rather than traditional banking metrics. The team is also building an integrated e-wallet to make payments and savings more seamless, deepening its role as a financial ecosystem rather than just a budgeting tool.
With over 15,000 users already onboard, MipangoApp demonstrates how culturally relevant technology can bridge the gap between financial exclusion and financial empowerment.
The co-founders have guided the company through accelerators such as PesaTech, LOFT Fintech Africa Accelerator, and NVIDIA Inception, while also winning the Wazo Challenge by Startup Reseau. Their work builds on Lilian Makoi’s broader footprint as a serial entrepreneur who has created solutions across fintech, health insurance, and digital safety, including FroKid Technologies, which focuses on protecting children online.
More so, Agnes Mollel’s role as COO ensures that Mipango’s operations, compliance, and product evolution stay aligned with the needs of ordinary Tanzanians. Together, the female co-founders have turned a personal struggle into a national tool for financial literacy, shaping a platform that reflects culture, language, and everyday financial realities in Tanzania.
