Senegal’s dilemma shops go digital to lane trade
Tablets and smartphones are replacing a cover and pen. PHOTO: AFP
DAKAR: Corner shops, markets and travel traders are still a normal approach many Senegalese do their shopping, though micro-businesses are branch to digital means of tracking clients in a west African nation’s spontaneous economy.
Amadou Bawol Bah, like many owners of a dilemma “boutiques” in Senegal, used to have a vast bill he filled in any day with purchases and credit offering to his customers.
“One day we was stuffing in some sum and some cooking oil sloping onto a ledger,” he removed of a impulse in 2015 that wiped out years of clever bookkeeping.
Bawol Bah’s disaster became a impulse for a locally-designed app called “Weebi”, definition “easy” in a internal Pulaar language, and a merchant hasn’t looked behind given downloading it.
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“Weebi simplifies sales and my invoices. The inscription and smartphone replaces a cover and pen,” explained Weebi’s co-founder Cheikh Sene, who began his start-up with dual other Senegalese and a Frenchman.
A micro-printer for profits completes a mix, Sene added.
PHOTO: AFP
Around half of Senegal’s purebred businesses are one-man traders like Bawol Bah, according to supervision statistics, and work during skinny margins with clients mostly reliant on credit paid behind during a finish of a month.
In a box of accidents like Bawol Bah’s, a app comes with trusted backup for any user, according to Weebi, so information stays protected in box of detriment or repairs to a device.
After winning a esteem for digital creation during a Africa-France limit hold in Bamako in January, Weebi’s ambitions are flourishing in a capital.
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Although only 40 users so distant have a app, that is a standalone download or can be bought for 118,000 FCFA ($200) preloaded onto a tablet, 300 clients have shown an seductiveness in a product in a Dakar area.
Marieme Assietou Diagne, who manages a health food smoothness business, says she has gained “more giveaway time and improved sales” given regulating a software.
PHOTO: AFP
“It helps us to follow clients — who are a regulars, a series of orders, and how many dishes we are offered per day,” she told AFP. “We can prerogative constant business during a finish of a month.”
Other tiny business owners have begun regulating “Somtou”, a console launched in May with an interface privately designed for Senegal’s infancy ignorant race that works with icons and voice commands.
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The pretender costs of shopping a laptop and a electricity compulsory to run it all day are restricted for most, and training in accountancy programmes or program such as Microsoft Excel tough to come by but profitable for classes.
With stout surrounding and splendid graphics, Somtou is directed precisely during marketplace traders and tiny businesses, pronounced a Cameroonian creator Ted Boulou.
“It allows those in a spontaneous zone to conduct their work some-more effectively, and gives them some-more accurate estimates of income, income and clients,” Boulou said.
That can commission them to improved discount indiscriminate costs and promotions, creation businesses some-more effective, he added, while filing of taxation earnings and other supervision papers became easier and some-more accurate.
Pricing is also stretchable for clients but most upfront cash.
“Some will compensate 13,000 FCFA ($22) per month for dual years, or 500 FCFA (85 US cents) a day for dual years,” Boulou explained, as a singular remuneration of 275,000 FCFA was restricted for many — and he has taken 100 orders.
Article source: https://tribune.com.pk/story/1438649/senegals-corner-shops-go-digital-track-trade/