MOBOfree, the leading African social marketplace, today announced a 274% year-on-year increase in the total value of goods on their platform in Nigeria. The current value of goods is 1.97 billion USD (394 billion NGN), up from 526 million USD (102.5 billion NGN) last year. This impressive growth outperforms the forecasted figure for 2015 by 30%.
MOBOfree attributes this huge increase in the value of goods to the safety of the MOBOfree platform, to an increasing number of repeat customers and to a renewed focus on the automotive and real estate categories of classified advertisements.
“Customers are going to the site because they are confident that buyers and sellers have been vetted. Once they experience the ease of use and added security, customers come back and use the site and are reassured on each occasion”, says MOBOfree CEO Cristobal Alonso.
MOBOfree has invested heavily in safety and security with a recently launched ID verification programme in addition to a dedicated quality control team which manually reviews every single advert before launching it live.
“This increase is indicative of a growing number of Nigerian consumers willing to buy, sell and swap stuff with people they can trust, MOBOfree makes this process easier and safer”, adds Alonso.
With this in mind, MOBOfree has hired local teams on the ground in Lagos to visit the largest car dealers and real estate agents. These teams on the ground serve to increase the adverts on the platform but more importantly they meet car dealers in person, check the cars and take photographs of the cars themselves to ensure that car buyers on MOBOfree get access to trustworthy car classifieds.
MOBOfree currently has over 500,000 active classifieds in Nigeria, 2-3 times more than their closest competitors.
A report on the Internet’s transformative potential in Africa by McKinsey & Company highlighted that e‑Commerce will open up a new shopping experience for Africa’s growing middle class. By 2025, it could account for 10 percent of retail sales in the continent’s largest economies, which will translate into some $75 billion in annual revenue.