When the idea of ChamaSpace came to us, it was simple: create an online platform where people who did not know each other could join chamas. Our goal was to allow people without a community to participate in chamas, since they are a great savings vehicle.

That was back in 2021/2022, when we began building what we initially called Chamabora. We registered the company as Jeld Investment Ltd because the government could not approve a name containing the word “chama,” as they assumed we were a self-help group. We later changed the name from Chamabora to ChamaSpace because we felt the word “Space” reflected a hub for chamas, which is exactly what our platform was meant to be.

The initial product we built is what is commonly known as a merry-go-round on our platform. It allows users to form or join chamas and start saving together. You should sign up and explore it,  it’s cool, I promise.

After developing the Chama platform, we began thinking about other products that could help individuals save more effectively. That led to the creation of Wekeza (Goals), with the mantra: “Save towards a goal.” The idea was simple: a user defines the financial goal they want to achieve within a certain period, and we provide a platform where they can save and also earn interest.

In line with our broader theme of chamas, which, at this point, should be understood as groups of individuals with common financial interests, we integrated group savings, allowing people to come together and save collectively.

After enabling users to save both individually and as groups, it was time to address one of the biggest concerns many people have: “I earn money, but I do not know where it goes, and it is definitely not in my savings because I have nothing to show for it.”

To help people make better financial decisions, it was important to help them track their income and expenses. We therefore integrated an expense-tracking system into our app. The goal was to help users build financial discipline, which would ultimately allow them to save more.

The expense tracker also enables us to offer customized financial insights automatically within the app (try it out, it’s cool, I promise). Staying true to our focus on both individuals and groups, we added “Spaces” within the expense tracker, ideal for tracking shared expenses such as family budgets, as well as “Projects,” which allow teams to track project-related expenses.

We did all this to help our users build financial discipline and ultimately achieve their financial goals.

Did I mention that we cater to individuals across all income brackets? Yes, that is exactly what we do. That is why you can save as little as KES 5 toward a goal.

And because we understand that people from different income levels may occasionally find themselves in financial difficulty and require access to credit, we introduced Kopeshana. But it is not just a loan platform; it is a peer-to-peer lending and borrowing platform, aligned with our broader theme of community and groups.

At this point, I am sure you can already see our area of specialization.

On the platform, a lender floats a loan offer, a borrower expresses interest, and they appoint a guarantor who has savings on our platform before the loan is disbursed. Alternatively, if you personally know the borrower, you may waive the guarantor requirement. The goal was to let the market determine the best loan terms, and it will.

At this point, I still have not mentioned the name of our platform. You would think that from the title, “Zedek” would have appeared at least a few times by now.

Perhaps I have avoided mentioning it because it is still a new name that I am getting used to. For many years, while building everything I have described above, I knew our platform as ChamaSpace.

But the change was ultimately prompted by our users.

Whenever we introduced ChamaSpace to someone who did not belong to a chama, they would quickly dismiss it as a platform that only catered to chamas. Yet, from everything you have read so far, you can clearly see that we are much more than that.

This realization led us into the process of searching for a new name. The naming journey itself is a story for another article, but for now, we are Zedek — a product of Jeld Investment Ltd.

And hopefully, when we mention Zedek, your question will be:
“What do you do?”
instead of:
“I don’t belong to a chama.”