Jobtech Alliance

🤦 It would be stupid if our definition of 'jobtech' missed out on 60%+ of employment that takes place in Kenya. But somehow people often still think that 'jobtech' is only about 'jobs'. But most employment in Africa is self-employment, and some of the most successful platforms are building for the 44 million MSMEs that exist on the continent. Our latest sector scan unpacks how platforms can improve livelihoods outcomes of microenterprises and soloentrepreneurs, largely by removing 'leakages' that exist in day-to-day operations. Check it out here 🎯 : https://lnkd.in/d5ts5ePM 🎥 BUT WAIT, there's more! We have an absolutely dope webinar coming up with some of the most interesting operators and researchers looking at microenterprise. Sign up here: https://luma.com/u8nlkvsu 📅 Thursday 18 June 🕛 2pm WAT/4pm EAT 👯 Absolutely top speakers Cathy Chepkemboi from Tushop, Jonathan Donner from Caribou, Ritika S. from Flowcart, Nicholas Markham from Jobtech Alliance and El-hadj Bah from African Development Bank Group

"Africans hate paying subscriptions." That's Akinbola Asalu, CEO of aktivate⚡️, on the pricing reality of building for African markets. They launched with subscriptions. Clients would onboard, love the product, then the invoice would just disappear into the void. No cancellation or conversation. Just silence. They pivoted to pay-per-campaign. Clients pay when there's a campaign to run; which is exactly when they're already in spending mode. Akinbola is this month's member spotlight in our newsletter. Check out his other insights here: https://lnkd.in/dJvYhYRt

Every jobtech founder building a two-sided marketplace has stood in their startup kitchen at 6 am asking the same question: chicken, or egg? Workers won't crack the eggs if no orders are coming in. Customers won't order if no one's at the pan. You need both whisked together; what we call liquidity. This month's edition of our newsletter is a recipe for it. Inside: → How to spot the "hard side" of your market (and why it changes over time) → Why you start with one geography, one category: the atomic network principle → Which metrics actually tell you the omelette isn't burning → Founder lessons from Shaaré, Instollar, Mavu and EqualReach Plus: our 18 June webinar on microenterprise platforms, and a member spotlight with aktivate⚡️'s Akinbola Asalu on why Africans hate paying subscriptions. Read the full edition below Subscribe while you're there! Mark Schoeman Awazi Angbalaga-Joshua Chris Maclay Chinwe Udo-Davis Msc, SPHRi Giselle Gonzales Angelo Paolo Kalaw Solomon Muigai

Every brand in this video pays someone's rent. Each one runs on someone's small business. Music streaming. Ride-hailing. Food delivery. Online marketplaces. Payment rails. Short video. All jobtech. All bigger than gig work. Most are powered by microenterprises; drivers, sellers and creators making a living through digital platforms. That's where African jobtech lives. Kyosk.app Boomplay M-PESA Africa SafeBoda Jumia Group

Let's talk about microenterprises. Across Africa, 44 million of them make up the dominant form of business and employment. Most run on memory, WhatsApp, and notebooks. The majority will stay this size for their working life, propping up local economies as they go. Our new sector scan, Digitising Microenterprises, maps how jobtech platforms are reshaping the way these businesses sell, run, and stabilise jobs around them. (link in comments) On June 18 (4–5:15 PM EAT), founders, researchers, and ecosystem players are getting together to unpack what the scan surfaces across 60+ platforms — from inventory and fulfilment to bookkeeping, order management, and embedded finance. The conversation, in partnership with Caribou, will get into why most existing support still misses the operational reality of running these businesses, and how platforms are increasingly becoming part of the infrastructure behind microenterprise growth. Join us: https://luma.com/u8nlkvsu

Jobtech is doing some genuinely unexpected things for microenterprise owners across Africa. It's tappi helping a market trader in Nairobi show up on Google, and turning that search into a WhatsApp conversation with a new customer. It's _________ helping _________ do _________. We're building a list of the most unexpected ones. Add yours. Kenfield Griffith Stacy Apiyo

A platform can have thousands of registered workers, and 80% of them never get work. But the dashboard looks fine. Users are up. Revenue per user is holding. This is the hidden side of the chicken-and-egg problem: a platform that's growing and breaking at the same time, and the numbers hiding it. We wrote a brief on it, including a diagnostic tool that tells you exactly which side of your market is the real constraint and what to do about it. Worth 20 minutes if you're building a two-sided marketplace. Check it out: https://lnkd.in/d5uyJbfN Mark Schoeman Awazi Angbalaga-Joshua Chinwe Udo-Davis Msc, SPHRi Giselle Gonzales Angelo Paolo Kalaw Shaaré EqualReach Instollar

$500 a month in revenue. $50 take-home. That's Nansubuga's market stall in Kampala, and it's not unusual. It's the median for a neighbourhood trader once you account for restocking, rent, transport, and airtime. She knows where the rest went. A stockout she didn't catch until customers had already gone elsewhere. A regular who took goods and didn't come back. A strong week with nothing recorded, so she reordered the wrong things. A loan doesn't fix any of that. It just gives her more money moving through the same operation. The platforms fixing these leakages aren't leading with credit, they're building the layer underneath it first. That's what our Microenterprises Sector Scan is about: https://lnkd.in/d8a9UNq2 For those building in this space, what did you build first, and would you sequence it the same way again? Nicholas Markham Flowcart Michael Schwartz Opareta Leja

Today is for everyone keeping things moving, and for all of you building and supporting the platforms that help them do it. Happy Labour Day to the founders and workers shaping the future of work across Africa. #LabourDay #JobtechAlliance

She's running a microenterprise. The phone in her hand is part of how. That's jobtech. It's Tendo letting someone sell from a digital catalogue with no inventory. It's Bumpa turning an Instagram DM into a paid invoice. It's ORDA running the back office of a thousand restaurants. It's Fitted using ML to take measurements so tailors can focus on sewing. It's Kandua building HustleOS for tradespeople. It's Twiva turning influencers into sales channels for MSMEs. These folks have been building jobtech for years, without the label attached to them Our new Microenterprise Scan picks up where our 2023 scan left off. Read it here: https://lnkd.in/d8a9UNq2 If you want the full arc, ping us for the 2023 scan in the comments. Ibi Cookey Sayo Folawiyo Kelvin Umechukwu Guy Futi