DataAcuity — External Proposition
Public-safe: for business prospects, partners, press
Classification: Public — share with business prospects, partners, investors (non-confidential version)
Do NOT include: % splits, entity structure, Qi/Karma mechanics, Bengu Group, redistribution detail
Links: AppInfo/DataAcuity/DataAcuity_Full_Proposition.md — internal version with full detail
Links: AppInfo/TheGeek/TheGeek_Offerings_Pages.md — web page copy
The Headline
DataAcuity gives businesses access to the most ethically-sourced, real-world dataset of emerging market consumer behaviour ever assembled.
The data comes from 17 live apps, used daily by hundreds of thousands of people across South Africa and Sub-Saharan Africa — people who consented to share their data, and who are compensated every time they do.
The Problem We Solve
Businesses that want to understand emerging market consumers — especially the unbanked, offline, and underserved — have two choices today:
Expensive, slow, biased formal research — surveys, focus groups, census extrapolations. By the time the report lands, the market has moved.
Scraped, inferred, or purchased data of questionable legality — from sources that never asked anyone for permission, in an era when POPIA, GDPR, and NDPR make that increasingly dangerous for buyers.
DataAcuity is the third option: real, consented, compensated, continuously updated data from the people themselves.
What Makes DataAcuity Different
The people in our data are usually invisible to others
The Geek Network's 17 apps are built for people without bank accounts, people who go offline regularly, people in townships and peri-urban areas, people earning informal income. These are the consumers most businesses can't see — and most want to understand.
DataAcuity makes them visible, on their own terms.
The data is consented at source
Every data point comes from a user who actively chose to share it. Not inferred from browsing behaviour. Not scraped from social media. Asked for. Agreed to. Granted.
This makes DataAcuity's data:
- Legally clean under POPIA, GDPR, NDPR, and 200+ territory laws
- Zero regulatory risk for buyers
- Trustworthy as a foundation for decisions
The data spans 17 domains of life
Most data providers give you one signal (financial, or social, or location). DataAcuity gives you the full picture — across wallets, employment, transport, safety, commerce, content creation, and more — from the same consented user base.
This enables insight that no single-domain dataset can provide:
- What does the journey from first wallet to first savings account look like?
- Where are people traveling to find work — and what routes are failing them?
- What do township consumers buy the day after payday — and what does that change when they've had stable income for six months?
The data includes offline activity
Aether by Circle, the mesh networking layer in every Geek Network app, means that DataAcuity captures activity in places with no internet coverage.
People tagging a location on TagMe while on a taxi with no data. People completing a wallet transaction via mesh relay in a rural area. People submitting a job application offline, synced when connectivity returns.
No other data provider has this. Because no other provider has built infrastructure that works when the internet doesn't.
The data is quality-stamped
Every DataAcuity API response includes a consentCoverage metric — the percentage of
the underlying data that was explicitly consented to.
We publish this because we can. Because our data is clean enough to stand behind.
What We Offer
Industry Reports
Periodic sector intelligence reports published for the South African and pan-African market.
Example reports available:
- Consumer spend patterns by province and economic tier
- Labour market demand: learnerships vs graduate roles by sector
- Mobility patterns: where South Africans travel, how far, and at what price
- The Aether Coverage Gap Report: where mobile internet fails and how many people are affected
- Financial inclusion trajectory: the journey from first wallet to first investment
- Content economy: the rise of the informal creative sector in Sub-Saharan Africa
Reports are available for purchase. Custom commissioned reports available for enterprises.
DataAcuity Pro API
Subscription access to aggregated, anonymised signals from the Geek Network ecosystem. Embed DataAcuity data into your own products, credit models, dashboards, or risk tools.
Available signal categories:
- Consumer spend patterns by product category, zone, and economic tier
- Labour market demand by sector, role type, and province
- Mobility demand by route type, origin/destination zone, and time band
- Physical-world activity (from TagMe) by place-category and sentiment
- Infrastructure gap signals (offline zones mapped by mesh activity)
- Cross-domain economic lifecycle signals
Wolverine Observability Platform
For engineering teams: the AI-powered event monitoring and self-healing infrastructure that powers the Geek Network's own 17-app, 36-API production environment — available as a standalone SaaS product.
Built for high-churn, infrastructure-variable environments. Ideal for African tech teams.
Use Cases by Industry
| Industry | What DataAcuity provides |
|---|---|
| FMCG / Consumer goods | Real-time spend patterns in township and peri-urban markets. What people buy, in what category, at what price point, at what economic stage. |
| Financial services / Fintech | Alternative behavioural signals for credit assessment in unbanked populations. Savings trajectory, transaction regularity, economic mobility direction. |
| Property and real estate | Population movement signals. Where people are moving to, from, and through — before the estate agents know. |
| Transport and logistics | Route demand in areas with no existing service data. Where people are trying to go — including areas your app doesn't reach. |
| Telecommunications | Network failure mapping from user behaviour. Where the internet fails, measured by the people experiencing it. |
| Government and policy | Ground-truth evidence from communities. Safety patterns, document verification gaps, labour market demand, informal economy activity. |
| Research and academia | Longitudinal economic mobility datasets. The full arc from first wallet to first investment — across languages, zones, and economic tiers. |
| Development Finance | Impact measurement for community-facing investment. Concrete behavioural evidence of economic inclusion progress. |
The Ethical Framework
DataAcuity operates under a clear ethical framework that we publish and stand behind.
What we sell: Anonymised, aggregated insights. Cohorts of minimum 1,000 users. Never individual-level data. Never raw personal information.
What we never sell:
- Individual-level data
- Data for advertising targeting (users did not consent to this)
- Data for political campaigns
- Data for debt collection
- Data that could re-identify individuals
Compliance: POPIA (South Africa), GDPR (EU), NDPR (Nigeria), and applicable laws in 200+ territories. Pre-cleared by design — not as an afterthought.
The underlying principle: The people who generated this data consented to it being used for research and business intelligence. They were compensated for it. They retain the right to withdraw consent at any time — and when they do, their events are excluded from future queries.
Why Now
Sub-Saharan Africa's consumer market is growing faster than any data provider's ability to understand it. The methods that work for wired, banked, formally-employed consumers in OECD markets do not transfer.
The businesses that move first to understand this market with real, consented, continuously updated data will have a durable advantage over those still relying on quarterly surveys.
DataAcuity is that data.
How to Engage
For industry reports: Available for purchase at thegeek.co.za/dataacuity
(page to be built — see AppInfo/TheGeek/TheGeek_Offerings_Pages.md)
For Pro API access and enterprise enquiries: dev@thegeek.co.za
For Wolverine Observability: dev@thegeek.co.za
Response within 2 business days.
Sample Data Points (Illustrative — not from live data)
These are illustrative examples of the type of insight DataAcuity produces. Actual reports use live, consented data.
"67% of SDPKT wallet top-ups in the R101–R500 band occur on the 25th–28th of the month, concentrated in Gauteng peri-urban zones — consistent with month-end salary patterns in informal employment."
"The Job Center sees a 340% spike in learnership searches in January and July — aligned with school calendar cycle. 78% of those searchers apply to at least one listing within the same session."
"TagMe records 4x higher tagging density in areas with Aether mesh activity vs internet-only areas — suggesting offline users are more engaged with location-based activity, not less."
"ShhMoney users who set a savings goal within 30 days of opening an SDPKT wallet show 3.2x higher Karma tier progression over 12 months than those who don't."
DataAcuity is a product of The Other Bhengu (PTY) Ltd trading as The Geek Network. Registered in South Africa. Governed by POPIA. Contact: dev@thegeek.co.za