Interview By Simeon Onoja
Moulaye Taboure: Taking Africa’s Culture to the World via E-commerce Moulaye was one of the top 10 finalists in the Jack Ma Foundation’s Africa Business Heroes Competition which aims to support and inspire the next generation of African entrepreneurs who are helping to build a more sustainable and inclusive economy for the future. Business Elites Africa caught up with Moulaye on the state of e-commerce in Africa, fundraising for entrepreneurs, among other issues. What inspired the launch of Afrikrea?
I was inspired by the realisation that there was a platform like Etsy in the US that is mainly around handcrafts and makes billions of dollars in sales every year.
And on the other hand, you have millions of artisans and craftsmen in Africa that mostly rely on tourism to sell their products. Pretty much every country I’ve travelled to has got at least one African art museum. I began to view this as a dichotomy that didn’t make sense.
Moulaye Taboure grew up in Mali and went on to work for globally acclaimed companies like PWC and Alstom. Having gained years of experience, he returned home to Africa, and in 2015 founded Afrikrea, an e-commerce startup that enables people across the world to discover, buy, and sell African fashion, arts and craft.
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frikrea now processes over $10 million transactions in more than 150 countries. Driven by service and operational excellence, Moulaye believes that e-commerce will play a pivotal role in boosting Africa’s economy in the future.
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How come something artful in the US was making billions of dollars in sales just from one platform, while at the same time, within the African continent, you have a lot of people equally creating good products, with numerous lovers and admirers all over the world, but there was no platform. So that contradiction was what sparked the idea of Afrikrea. What was it like being among the top 10 finalists at Jack Ma’s Africa Business Heroes?
I’ve been lucky to be selected in a few competitions, but this is the one I’m most proud of. Not only because I am a fan of Jack Ma, but because of the other nine people in the competition.
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