TRIBE author
TRIBE Editorial Team
Ideas about AI, money, business and the future of African commerce.
Across Africa, a lot of business already happens digitally, just not in the neat way most software was designed for. A customer sees a product on Instagram, sends a message on WhatsApp, asks for...
Read articleTRIBE did not begin because we thought Africa needed another fintech application. If anything, the opposite was true. The more time we spent around people selling online, receiving payments,...
Read articleFor most of the history of software, people have had to learn how computers want things done. We learn where the button is, which menu contains the feature, where to find the report, what...
Read articleThe average small business owner does not wake up in the morning thinking about CRMs, inventory systems, payment infrastructure, automation workflows or customer databases. They wake up thinking...
Read articleWhatsApp was built as a messaging application, but in many parts of Africa it quietly became something much larger. It became a storefront, customer service desk, sales channel, negotiation table...
Read articleSelling on WhatsApp in Cameroon is already common enough that the question is no longer whether it works. The more important question is how to do it without allowing the entire business to become...
Read articleThere is a tendency to make starting an online business sound more complicated than it needs to be. Someone decides they want to sell something, and before they have made their first 10,000 CFA...
Read articleMobile money has become so normal in Cameroon that it is easy to forget how significant the change has been. A customer can see something online, speak to the seller, send money from their phone...
Read articleArtificial intelligence becomes much less mysterious when you stop asking what AI can do and start asking where your business wastes time. Most small businesses do not need a robot running the...
Read articleE-commerce moved stores onto the internet, but it did not fundamentally change the way software expected people to interact with those stores. Customers still had to search, click, filter,...
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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...
Read articleTechnology 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...
Read articleEvery 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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Money has always been controlled through instructions. Send this amount to this person. Pay this bill before Friday. Collect this invoice. Split this expense. Remind me when rent is due. What...
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Mobile money has already changed African finance once. It gave millions of people a practical way to move digital value through a device they already owned, without requiring the full structure of...
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Business software has traditionally rewarded people who are willing to learn how it is organized. You learn where the customer section lives, where inventory lives, where reports are generated and...
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Inventory is one of those parts of business that feels simple until it starts costing you money. At first, you know what you have because the products are sitting in front of you. Then sales...
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The smartphone has quietly become one of the most important pieces of business infrastructure in Africa. A person can market, speak to customers, collect payments, send documents, contact...
Read articleFinancial software has traditionally been organized around products and features. You open an application, choose the thing you want, fill in the required information and confirm the action. This...
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Small businesses often think selling more means reaching more people, but that is only one part of the problem. Many businesses already have interested customers passing through WhatsApp,...
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The future of commerce in Cameroon is already appearing in fragments around us. It is in the seller posting products on WhatsApp status, the customer discovering something through TikTok, the...
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