Former Prime Minister and AeTrade Group Board Chairman, Hailemariam Desalegn told ENA that about 3.5 million small and medium enterprises in Africa have been registered to use the SOKOKUU digital platform.

Sokokuu, meaning a big market in Swahili, is a platform developed by AeTrade Group to enable traders in Africa conduct cross border trade using ICT as a tool with a views to minimizing physical barriers and enhancing intra-and inter-African trade.

The group’s cooperation in Ethiopia will help facilitate e-commerce through the SOKOKUU platform across the continent, Hailemariam said.

According to him, as Addis Ababa is one of the five regional centers of AeTrade Group in Africa, the group is working in partnership with the Ethiopian Government, the African Union, and Ethiopian Airlines to realize its continental objectives, including facilitating the implementation of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) using SOKOKUU.

“To assist the implementation of AfCFTA, we developed an online e-commerce platform —SOKOKUU, which resembles to Amazon and Alibaba, to support small and medium enterprises participating in the African market…. About 3.5 million manufacturers and traders have registered and some of them have started trade with Ethiopian Airlines as a facilitator based on our agreement. So, the center in Addis Ababa is helping us to facilitate this e-commerce trade in cooperation with the Government of Ethiopia,” the AeTrade Group Board Chairman said.

AeTrade Group represents the private sector that will play a great role in implementing AfCFTA and is working in partnership with the AU.

“We as an umbrella institution are leading all the African institutions engaged in digital technology. We speak our own voice, especially the African Union is leading it after signing the MoU with us. So it’s not like a mere private institution. We lead together with the African Union.”

The chairman pointed out that some African governments are doing well, but many are lagging behind.

A monitoring and evaluation system will be implemented to assess and inform the status of governments in the next AU assembly, he added.

Hailemariam called on African governments and businesses to register and undertake e-commerce under the SOKOKUU platform.

Some 75 to 80 million small and medium enterprises are expected to join the SOKOKUU e-commerce platform in the next 15 years.

Source: Ethiopian News Agency