TRIBE Insights
Ideas about AI, money, business and the future of African commerce.
Featured · Business Automation
Before commerce became digital, it was already conversational. You walked into a shop, explained what you wanted, asked questions, negotiated where appropriate, received recommendations and...
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Technology companies often build products around the assumption that people should come to them. Download the application, create the account, learn the interface, understand where everything is...
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A website can be useful, but a website is not the thing that makes commerce happen. People bought and sold long before websites existed, and people continue to buy every day through WhatsApp,...
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The moment a business begins selling online, payment becomes one of the first places where friction appears. The customer may be ready to buy, but if completing the payment requires copying...
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A lot of the conversation around AI agents sounds as though every business is about to hire a digital employee that works twenty-four hours a day and runs the company without supervision. The...
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Conversational commerce sounds like a new technology term, but the behavior behind it is ancient. Commerce has always involved conversation. A customer explains what they need, asks questions,...
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WhatsApp commerce and traditional e-commerce are often presented as though one must eventually defeat the other, but that misses the more useful question. They solve the same commercial problem...
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Every time a new business problem appears, the technology industry seems to respond with another application. There is one for customers, another for inventory, another for payments, another for...
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WhatsApp makes commerce feel easy because a sale can begin with a simple message. The same quality that makes it convenient, however, is also what makes it dangerous as an order management system....
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A surprising amount of revenue disappears in the space between “I am interested” and “I am ready to buy.” The customer did not necessarily reject the product. They became busy, forgot, needed more...
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Digital products are attractive because they remove many of the physical limitations that make traditional commerce expensive. You do not need to restock an ebook every time someone buys it. A...
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Selling physical products online is sometimes described as though the internet itself is the difficult part. In reality, the hardest parts are usually much more ordinary: getting people to trust...
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Useful ideas for people building, selling and moving money across Africa.