Momahmoses/ng-informal-credit-scoring

||Alternative data credit scoring for Nigeria's informal economy using LightGBM, SHAP and demographic fairness auditing on mobile money, airtime and market records. # Informal Economy Credit Scoring for Nigerian Market Traders > ML credit scoring engine that generates a bankable creditworthiness score (300–850) for Nigeria's informal workers using alternative data: mobile money transaction patterns, airtime behaviour, market association records, and geospatial stability, unlocking capital for the 65% of Nigeria's economy that is informal. --- ## The Problem **65% of Nigeria's economy is informal.** A market woman who has traded successfully for 20 years, pays her stall rent on time, and runs a profitable business has zero credit history, every bank sees a blank file and says no. Meanwhile, Nigeria's microfinance sector charges 60–120% annual interest rates to cover default risk that good credit scoring would eliminate. --- ## Solution An alternative credit scoring engine that translates informal financial behaviour into a 300–850 FICO-style score: - **Mobile money patterns** (OPay, PalmPay, Moniepoint), transaction regularity, volume, counterparty diversity - **Airtime behaviour**, top-up frequency and amount (income proxy) - **Market association records**, membership tenure, dues payment history - **Geospatial stability**, same market stall daily (consistent trader = lower risk) - **Phone metadata**, SIM age, device consistency --- ## Ethical Framework This system was designed with fairness as a core constraint, not an afterthought: - **NDPR compliant**, explicit opt-in, data minimization, right to erasure - **Demographic parity**, 35% | Build history first | --- ## Model Performance | Metric | Value | Target | |---|---|---| | Gini Coefficient | **0.52** | > 0.45 | | KS Statistic | **0.42** | > 0.35 | | Default rate reduction vs baseline | **28%** | > 20% | | Demographic parity gap | **3.2%** | < 5% | | Score explanation coverage | **100%** | 100% | --- ## Project Structure ``` ng-informal-credit-scoring/ ├── src/ │ ├── features/ │ │ ├── mobile_money_features.py # Transaction pattern engineerin …