eCommerce Comes To Ethiopia With A Sheep Giving Site

Culture

from the whatever-works dept

While internet and credit card penetration in Ethiopia are still very low, one entrepreneur has apparently built an e-commerce site that fills a need there. It seems that it’s traditional in Ethiopia to give someone a sheep as a gift, and Ethiopians abroad (who do have internet access, and do have credit cards) were having trouble buying sheep remotely. Problem solved. An e-commerce site for Ethiopian ex-pats to buy and deliver sheep (and plenty of other gifts) online. The guy who created it even has taken a bit of Starbucks-style-marketing. Instead of offering small, medium, and large sheep, your choices are limited to medium, big, and “very big”. I actually think this is a great example of what e-commerce should be about: filling a need that people have. Too many e-commerce sites weren’t filling a need, they were filling a desire by the founder to get rich.