There are more and more services popping up created for Africans living abroad to shop and deliver commodities to their relatives in their home country. As covered in a previous story, the sub-Saharan African remittance market is about $20 billion annually, so it only makes sense for more tech-smart businessmen to tap into this.
The lack of any cost-effective traditional money transfer service has also played a part in the creation of this financial back-channel. Africans in the diaspora can buy (or send) a wide variety of goods and services including; airtime minutes, flowers, cakes, school fees, shopping vouchers, etc… the list goes on.
Below are a couple of these websites and their respective country:
I’m sure there will be more innovation and interesting sites building out in this place throughout the continent. In fact, I’m sure I’ve missed a great deal of the sites that are already out there. If there is a site that you think I have missed, add it to the comment area below.
April 21, 2008 at 4:43 pm
Very interesting Erik. I will definitely be passing Zimbuyer on to my readers at eLp. Anyone aware of anything similar for South Africa? Apart from regular online shopping and delivery sites?
April 22, 2008 at 1:02 am
Hi Erik,
Here are some other:
http://www.fohmo.com/ designed by the same guys of happysend
http://www.mboasu.com
They are all from Cameroon
April 22, 2008 at 1:57 am
Of course there’s mama mikes
Alsoa new one tele yetu
April 26, 2008 at 10:49 am
I like mama mikes and and icare too. If this continues probably people will feel abit secure when shopping online. Some few comments on mama mikes show that they guys are effective and now that they shopped from UK, Sweden etc, the same guys will make african realize they it is actually safe to shop online and probably use a service like paypal where their credit cards information won’t be shared online.
May 2, 2008 at 1:30 pm
Check http://www.bayamsellam.com looking at online shopping from an African perspective.
June 16, 2008 at 1:01 pm
Here is another one: http://www.primissimo.net
This one from Cameroon too.
January 25, 2009 at 6:44 am
e-commerce is getting more and more popular. this creates the need of having good tools to help shoppers make right decisions while buying online. reizit.com is a place where shoppers can recommend or bury a product, share experience and discuss shopping deals.