(Agence Ecofin) – MTN Group is exploring opportunities in e-commerce reserved for African companies. The South African group had already been one of the shareholders of Jumia, the best known of the continent’s e-commerce retail sites, during its development phase.
South African mobile communications group MTN Group is exploring new opportunities in e-commerce, this time as part of a business service. He recently announced that he has teamed up with Dooka, the company that set up the first marketplace to meet the supply needs of businesses in Africa.
« Our new relationship with Dooka is extremely exciting and brings efficiencies to all levels of the supply chain. It will transform the way businesses operate in Africa. I am extremely proud that MTN is the lead partner for a truly African organization and a solution designed specifically for Africa said Dirk Karl, MTN Group Purchasing Manager.
On its website, we learn that Dooka is a market place that was built on the Tradeshift cloud space, a network of commercial exchanges between companies which claims nearly 1,000 billion USD in transactions since its creation. To do so, Dooka benefited from funding from Nicky and Jonathan Oppenheimer, South African brothers who are members of one of the wealthiest families in Africa.
The details of the partnership between MTN Group and Dooka were not given, but the South African giant explained that it will be the first beneficiary of this partnership, which will allow its many suppliers and that of its subsidiaries to go through this platform for responding to and executing calls for tenders. The group then hopes to attract many other African companies and multinationals, as suppliers or customers.
This is not the first adventure of the South African telecommunications group in the e-commerce sector. He was one of the shareholders of Jumia until 2020, even if its leaders considered that this participation was non-essential. The business-only e-commerce segment is a growth niche that is gradually revealing its potential for Africa. Indeed, this market remains segmented, because there is not really a single framework where buyers and suppliers from the continent can meet.