Zimbabwean businesses are embracing the Internet to capture a large part of their paying audiences who may live beyond their own borders.
Many Zimbabweans now live outside of Zimbabwe. For one reason or another, they now live abroad in the US, UK, Canada, Australia, etc. Oh who am I kidding? They are abroad for political and economic reasons. It is these same economic reasons that have seen local Zimbabwean businesses take to the Internet and serve Zimbabweans abroad for their invaluable foreign currency. This is the lifeline of most Zimbabwean companies: Forex.
So how does this work?
Basically, people abroad still have most of their family back home and contribute financially from time to time to support the family. With a lot going on due to the recent economic crisis in Zimbabwe, there has been an increasing need to purchase services or products such as generators, solar panels, boreholes, wells, etc., just to meet the basic needs of the life. Your water, your energy, etc. At one point there was even a need to buy actual groceries online or abroad just so someone could survive. It is not a joke.
Anyway, against this rather dark and gloomy backdrop, some active companies have used their contacts to connect and capture this market for profit. I have lost count of how many Zimbabweans are out of the country, but last I heard it could have been as many as 5 million against a total population of around 12 million. This is more than 1 in 3 living outside! That may seem tragic at first, but when you look at someone overseas potentially supporting 2 or 3 people on average, the numbers get much brighter. I’m sure you can see the potential here.
Instead of the usual costly and prohibitive phone calls to overseas landlines, more and more companies are setting up websites and using services like Skype and the usual ordinary email to get in touch with those in distant lands just so they can make business together. In fact, there is now a saying that there are only two types of businesses in Harare; those online and those out of business! In fact, there is now a formidable presence of such companies on social networks like Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, etc. And who can blame them? You need to connect with your prospects where they play, right? Right.
Local infrastructure is also helping with this and that data cable being rolled out to handle the wave of traffic online and the Internet in general. I heard that there are now more Blackberry mobile phones than any other brand of mobile phones in major cities simply due to the demand for online access and such.
With very few online businesses in Zimbabwe to begin with, those online are in contact with these “foreigners” and can easily market their services for payment directly online but with the services dispatched or served in Zimbabwe itself. With “cheaper” online marketing and easier communications, this has proven to be a real winner and continues to grow. The Internet is definitely the way to go. Who is the next one?
