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Bulletin board site to 'boost' African trade

Gareth van Zyl
By Gareth van Zyl, Editor, ITWeb Africa
Johannesburg, 21 Feb 2012

A soon-to-be-launched digital bulletin board - accessible through SMS updates, an Android smartphone application, Nokia phones and the Web - could boost hyper-local trade in Africa.

This is according to Johan Nel, chief executive of Cape Town-based Umuntu Media and founder of Mimiboard.com. The Web site derives its name from the Swahili word “Mimi”, meaning “I”, and the concept of a noticeboard that allows groups of people to communicate or transact.

Nel says users of the self-labelled “socioeconomic network” will be able to create a bulletin board using an easy-to-use wizard, geo-tag the board for a specific area, add categories to it, and then enable a local community in that area to publish any relevant nearby information such as daily traffic updates, classifieds and restaurant reviews.

People can also use the system to transact. For example, a fishmonger in Mombasa could create a bulletin informing fishermen in the area to update their catch of the day via mobile phone texts, or the smartphone app to let the fishmonger know what fish are available for sale.

Mimiboard is still in beta testing, but Nel says he plans for it to become available in 30 days on Umuntu Media's six existing content portals in Namibia, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Botswana, Mozambique and Angola, which all have the “i-“ brand as a local URL extension, such as iNamibia.co.na.

The company has further plans to extend its content offerings to Uganda, Rwanda, Tanzania, Kenya, Ghana and Nigeria in the coming months too.

“Publishers all over the world have the same challenges: keeping users engaged, playing in the social media area, revenue and maintaining a community,” comments Nel.

However, establishing a start-up such as Mimiboard is a challenge and struggle for his organisation in Africa, Nel notes.

“It is not easy, it takes guts, very hard work, dye to hide all the grey hair and some luck.

“Daily we struggle with power cuts, slow Internet, slow response to proposals and a lot of protected turf in the different countries we operate in. All of that makes me love this more,” he adds.

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