The African classifieds business

This is a first of a series of posts about what I think of the African classifieds business.
Disclaimer: I will be very biased in my opinions, because of my interest in Kerawa.com.

I haven’t been on the internet since childhood. Normal, I am an African in Africa. I may even say I am around 6 years old online. Pretty old , huh ? If I bring this up, it’s because I am trying to recollect how the local African internet sites were when I discovered the internet. I do remember that in my early years online, most top local websites were newspapers. These online newspapers were particularly relevant because most Africans in the Diaspora wanted to know what’s going on in their respective homelands.

It turns out most African locals weren’t that interested in these online newspapers. The locals who did visit those news sites may have done this because of lack of other local content. Well, that was before classifieds came along.

The top three useful killer apps on the internet are: Email, Search, and Classifieds. Period. I won’t bother justifying this claim. The main difference between online clasifieds and the rest is that it is very easy for an email and search solution to grow internationally. However the online classifieds business is a complex beast which we are only beginning to tame.

I use the term online classifieds very loosely here to refer to any web property that permits individuals to submit ads which the public can view, and expect to get responses. Some of these sites may be classifieds, but don’t define themselves as one. For example, a forum may be considered a classifieds if its users start heavily using the forum as a medium for posting ads. Some Yahoo Groups could be considered online classifieds solutions. A dating site is just a much specialised classifieds solution.

Scarcity in dedicated classifieds solutions has caused our usual ingenious African selves to use services like forums, mails, and social networks as a means of posting ads. Do not get me wrong. These media really do provide a plausible way of posting ads. But nothing beats a dedicated online classifieds solution.

Some Africans are seeing this need and are participating in creating really helpful online local classifieds. We too have done our part. In fact, we’ve done more than our part. We’ve created the African online classifieds. We’ve created Kerawa.com.

Fee, from Kerawa.com.