TRIBE Insights
Ideas about AI, money, business and the future of African commerce.
Featured · TRIBE
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 the storyTRIBE 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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Useful ideas for people building, selling and moving money across Africa.