What is your background?
I was fortunate enough to attend a school that taught me everything about digital technology, namely Jumia. I worked for the group, specifically for Jumia Car, as Managing Director. At the same time, I decided to launch an insurance simulator, the first e-insurance platform in French-speaking West Africa, followed by a comparison tool in nine African countries called Comparez.co. I then decided to launch the Senegalese startup ADAFRI with Ibrahima Touré. This week, we're celebrating our first anniversary!
Can you tell us about ADAFRI?
ADAFRI is a programmatic tool for SMEs that want to increase their visibility on the internet. We automate digital campaigns on the Google Ads network for our clients, enabling them to advertise across the web. Our tool optimizes the performance of any advertiser.
How did the project come about?
In November 2018, Google Ads decided to no longer accept prepaid cards on its platform, making it very difficult for advertisers on the African continent to launch digital advertising campaigns.
To counteract this constraint, we chose to integrate payment methods into our platform that are in line with the African reality, namely mobile money.
Our tool automates the process of buying and selling advertising space with Google's advertising network. Advertisers can thus benefit from our platform to launch campaigns with a targeted audience.
What are your ambitions? In which countries do you want to launch your services?
We wanted to make digital technology more accessible in Africa, particularly for small and medium-sized businesses that do not necessarily have knowledge of digital marketing.
For the moment, our platform is deployed in Senegal, Ivory Coast, and Mali, but we are aiming to expand into other countries such as Burkina Faso, Cameroon, the DRC, and Tunisia. Our ambition is to cover all of French-speaking West Africa within a year. We will then develop an English version of our platform to reach English-speaking Africa. But to develop our tool, we need to find distribution channels such as telcos, banks, and fintech companies.
Who are your customers?
We currently have more than 250 regular customers. Strategically, we are focusing more on small and medium-sized businesses because we want to strengthen them and help them go digital. We noticed that these players did not have the means to have a website. That's why we decided to develop a website editor to enable them to go digital and launch digital campaigns just like the bigger players. Once their website is created, we guide them towards programmatic advertising.
Who are your competitors already present on the market?
Our main competitor is in Nigeria, Eskimi, but the conditions for accessing their platform are much more restrictive.