Naspers/MIH Africa has penned down an agreement with the largest classifieds marketplace in Nigeria-JiJi for the sale of its OLX businesses in Ghana, Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda to Build a Strong Pan-African Classifieds Marketplace
The transaction, which is expected to occur once certain regulatory approvals are made is supported by Digital Spring Ventures and all users of the sell-and-buy classified websites of OLX are to be redirected to jiji’s platform. The Jiji team will strive to make the transfer seamless, and provide a high-quality user experience across all geographies.
Jiji boasts of impressive statistics in the Nigerian e-commerce marketplace with over 6 million active users and 50,000 sellers listing close to one million commodities in one of the fastest growing e-commerce marketplace.
A Brief History
Following the departure of MIH Africa’s CEO in 2014, many people has been asking questions about the fate of OLX, one of its benefiting companies in Africa.
Naspers is a leading multinational group of media and e-commerce platforms and one of the largest technology investors in the world with MIH Africa as a subsidiary partner for its African operations and their departure left a huge gap in Africa’s classified marketplace.
OLX had closed its African operations and offices including Uganda and centralised them in South Africa at Naspers headquarter to fulfill it’s 2014 plan to exit the companies loss-making markets in Sub-Saharan Africa.
E-commerce still remains one of the growing marketplaces in Africa and faces a similar dilemma any growing industry would face in terms of uncertainty and customer base but this consolidated audiences of Jiji and OLX will create a single user base of more than 8 million monthly unique users and that might boost the industry to certain new heights.
