A research platform you can run. A research agency you can hire.
Wakamoso is a WhatsApp-native research platform with an offline-capable Field Mobile App for enumerator fieldwork in disconnected and data-poor communities. Organisations use it three ways: run their own surveys and studies on the platform; commission Wakamoso to deliver a bespoke study end-to-end; or partner with us on long-running community research. Behind all three sits a measurement framework refined over more than two decades of South African community research.
WhatsApp in. Dashboards out.
Wakamoso is built for the way Africans actually use the internet — WhatsApp-first, low bandwidth, conversational — with an offline-capable Field Mobile App for enumerators where signal can’t reach. Organisations script and launch their own studies on the platform. Or our research team — analysts with more than twenty years of community-research experience — designs and delivers the study end-to-end.
The platform routes structured question sets to participants and captures responses with smartphone GPS precision — typically accurate to within a few metres of the respondent’s actual location. Researchers define the polygons used to aggregate the results: wards, suburbs, school catchments, retail trade areas, service-delivery zones, custom municipal areas — whatever the study calls for. The same dataset can be re-analysed against multiple polygon sets without re-collecting. Every interaction is timestamped, and the framework is designed to withstand academic peer review.
Organisations receive aggregate insight through dashboards and reports. Individual participants keep rights over their own records.
In one flow
- Respondent joins through a WhatsApp number or QR code.
- Consent is captured explicitly, clause by clause.
- Structured question flow delivers the SACCS instrument or a bespoke module.
- Responses are geotagged, timestamped, and written to a POPIA-compliant store.
- Aggregate results flow to dashboards, scheduled reports, or API.
- Community participants can request deletion or correction at any time.
Three layers. One platform.
Every Wakamoso client gets a self-serve research platform, a managed-research option from our team of senior analysts, and a persistent data workspace that compounds over time. Underneath sit three architectural layers — a secure client tenancy, a community data layer, and the insight applications on top — the same architecture whether the study is a ward-level baseline, a weekly themed survey, or an employee-sentiment pulse across tens of thousands of workers.
Secure tenancy
Each organisation operates inside a protected environment. Surveys, datasets, and insights remain private. Data ownership and access control stay with the organisation. Institutional knowledge compounds over time instead of being lost between vendor engagements.
Community data layer
A consent-driven, anonymised, aggregated layer of community-generated data, built through ongoing engagement with individuals and households. Individuals build evolving digital profiles of their identities, livelihoods, and assets. Personal data stays under their control.
Insight applications
Real-time dashboards, geospatial mapping, longitudinal monitoring, and targeted survey distribution across defined geographic and demographic segments — moving organisations from static reporting to adaptive, data-driven decision-making.
If you can describe what you need to know, Wakamoso can field it.
The platform is the infrastructure; the instrument is whatever the study needs. A ward-level capability baseline, a weekly themed survey through a radio station, an employee-sentiment pulse across tens of thousands of workers, a live programme delivery dashboard — all run through the same pipe.
Ward-level capability baseline
The C3B Baseline Instrument — sixty scored questions across eleven domains, cross-walked to recognised international indicators including MPI, Afrobarometer, DHS, MICS, FIES, SIGI, and the UN SDG framework. One of the standardised modules available on the platform.
Weekly thematic surveys
The DSTI-funded Mams Radio × Wakamoso series in Mamelodi runs a new themed instrument every week — safety, shelter, livelihoods, women, youth, governance. We call it Rapid WhatsApp Distributed Themed Surveys (RWDTS). Two days from brief to first reading.
Employee engagement at scale
58,000 employees at a large South African mining group reached through WhatsApp for continuous feedback on communication, sentiment, and operational conditions — replacing annual climate surveys with real-time signal.
Programme delivery, tracked in real time
Uitsig, Cape Town — a community renewal programme run by Wakamoso in partnership with the Atterbury Trust and the City of Cape Town. Paint-pack applications, deliveries, home completions, mural work, food-garden selections, and employment enablement flow through the Wakamoso API into a live dashboard. Bi-weekly oversight reports are generated off the same data.
Consumer and market intelligence
Product tests, pack concepts, penetration studies, service-recovery diagnostics — at ward granularity across townships, farms, mines, and retail footprints. Loyalty programmes plug in through the same distribution engine, rewarding members in their existing points currency.
Programme M&E
Baseline, midline, endline, theory-of-change tracking, beneficiary profiling, and adaptive programme monitoring for NGOs and development funders — with verifiable, continuously updated data instead of once-a-cycle snapshots.
Communities are not the subject. They are the source, and they share in the signal.
Communities generate
Residents opt in to the Wakamoso community research panel. They answer structured questions on their phone, on their own time, in the language of their choice.
Organisations buy insight
Researchers, businesses, municipalities, and NGOs access ward-level aggregates, dashboards, and reports — under data-use agreements that define scope, purpose, and retention.
Communities receive value
Participants see results for their own ward, are rewarded for valid participation, and gain visibility into what the data is being used to decide.
Built POPIA-compliant. Not retrofitted.
Wakamoso was designed after POPIA. Consent is explicit and granular. Purpose limitation is enforced by the data-use agreement, not by platform policy. Data subjects can request access, correction, or deletion — and the system enforces the request.
- Explicit, granular, clause-by-clause consent at onboarding.
- Purpose-limited data use agreements for every organisation.
- Geotagged and timestamped records with verified identity.
- Aggregate-only access for client organisations — aggregation runs against the polygons the researcher defines, with privacy floors that prevent identification of individuals.
- Data-subject rights to access, correction, and deletion are enforced in-platform.
- No sale of personal data. Ever.