Africa Trade Link [ATL]

AFRICA TRADE LINK

[Click Here To View Our Prototype] https://sites.google.com/view/africatradelink/home

Inspiration:

Among the several issues, we're facing on the continent of Africa that is slowing the combating of the spread of COVID-19 is the high congestion of people and unnecessary movement. The movements happen when people in the community have to find food and other basic necessities, including food, groceries, and medical supplies, where necessary.

These interactions happen especially in marketplaces, and additionally, due to the lockdowns, it's hard to transport goods from one province or country to another and to knowing required commodities for the community. This lack of information creates a buffer that will accelerate food insecurity and its consequences, such as malnutrition, especially for the growing children and people with weak immunity. When and finally, people become desperate, they will eventually do anything within their means to find food, including crossing the border to get supplies. The desperate move might lead to the high spread of COVID-19 in the whole region and eventually leading to border insecurity due to uncontrolled movements. Cash payment methods used in Africa also act as potential ways to spread COVID-19 through the community.

Mainly in Sub Saharan Africa, logistics, movers, and food delivery companies charge a high price to people due to lack of regulatory measures, inefficient planning, and transport network. Combined with high levels of poverty, people in the community can barely afford to use their services. Therefore, as the proud children of Africa, we intend to work together to find a solution for our community that extends beyond our villages and provinces.

Solution:

Due to these issues that affect our communities in which we live every day, we propose to create an application that links farmers, suppliers, industries, retailers, and consumers, more so like a community marketplace. The application will mainly be an information-sharing platform with data hosted in clouds so that it can be cost-effective.

The smart mobile telephone or any wireless-enabled devices would have been the ideal choice of the device to use so that people can use the platform in their comfort zone without having a fear of getting infected with COVID 19 when they come in contact. However, the unpleasant fact is that that our lovely farmers who feed nations the majority of them do not own a smartphone or any wireless-enabled device. The good news, however, is that we will set up Point of services (POS) at the Provinces down to districts and towards where a farmer can ride a bicycle to access that POS to load information and access information while we follow the COVID 19 guidelines.

The Project will be done in one phase due to the pandemic outbreak of COVID-19, we will skip a few steps such as usability testing and go straight to development and rolling out, which is the implementation phase. As we start to correct and to learn the abilities of our communities, then we can improve as appropriate.

During the implementation phase, we will set-up information centres in each province of the country, and every province would have sub information centres in every district and every big market in the district. The information collected will be uploaded to the data centre, which will be cloud-based, the same information centre will also be used by the farmers, industries and sellers of merchandise and goods to inform the community of the available good in the market. We will have the information collected from the sellers available on the web and mobile application, and the application will show available products, the quantity, the prices, and the seller names and location and time for delivery where time applies in that community in case of home delivery.

The consumers will have to order their required goods through the application for those who can, while others with no access to technology platform will just order through our agents or Point Of Service[POS], as the supply trucks deliver food and other merchandise from different people in the same community on the same route. The benefit is reduced transportation costs, continued foods supplies, and improved food security.

The Information centre would help to show the required goods in each province or region, by combining all sellers' orders in the given province while ordering through the information centres of the province with the ordered goods and making sure that the truck that supplies that order doesn't go back empty. This application makes the trading de-centralized and no massive needs for the warehouse, this might also reduce transportation costs and making sure all the places in the country have all the necessary goods, and the farmers also don't have to struggle a lot to find people to buy their harvests because they will be just informing the agents or directly upload the information. These agents will also be helping in spreading the news about any pandemic outbreak in the community.

As we previously noted, in most rural African communities that grow food everyone there don't have smartphones or enough knowledge to use the application effectively, therefore having an agent or an operator at the Point of service would help people order their products and also sell their products.

These plans are to eventually roll out to application in the Sub-Saharan African; each of us will concentrate on the regional and country-level first, such as East Africa, West Africa or Central Africa, among others. We plan to make this a considerable business link platform across the entire continent of Africa.

During the growth of the online platform grown, we are planning to have partners that would be in every country to handle logistics and information management, then a General manager that oversees the entire operation. The human resource set up will aid the sellers and buyers to avoid the inter-governmental red tape; buying and selling will be quick and reliable. The burden of crossing the boarders will be waived and considered unnecessary, and once again, the truck that delivers the goods goes back with the goods needed by the other country, also saving transportation cost by making one ride with two deliveries.

This Project intends to become later the African's most abundant online marketplace combined with logistics and supplies which will be solving the hunger and food insecurity problem that has been around for decades, and now, during this isolation and lockdown, it has been considerably blown out of proportion by the COVID 19 out. Overall there will be decongestion in public places and such as markets and grocery stores, it will promote cashless economy and this will prevent more spread and secondary infection when and if this ever occurs. There will be food and merchandise in places where it's most needed at a relatively reasonable cost since there will be fewer middlemen, and finally, the whole of Africa will move smoothly, and no country will have insufficient or extensive goods of a given product.

Web and Mobile Application Features:

Ø The application will have three categories, namely: wholesaler's category, Retailer's category, Farmers category. These categories will make it easy to find your desired products.

Ø Cloud-based.

Ø It will allow sellers to upload their products through the information centres.

Ø It should display available goods quantity, seller details, price, and possible discounts.

Ø The buyer or clients should be able to place order quantity and his location.

Ø There will be different payment methods to perform payment transactions.

Ø It will also display the time for delivery where applicable.

Start-up Budget For 30 Districts:

1. 150 Markets

2. 600 Farmers

3.Transporters to operate on delivery service: We will partner up with logistic companies

4.500 Agents and 200 coordinators.

5.450 smartphones and 200 laptops

Total Estimated Price = 350, 000$

Profit Source:

We would make a profit by charging 7% service fee from traders on every sale we make.

Calculations:

If we sold 100 USD worth sales for each market(150 markets):

Total sales= 15, 000 USD.

That would make us a profit worth 1, 000 USD.

If we sold 50 USD worth sales for each farmer:

Total sales=30, 000 USD.

That would make us a profit worth 3, 000 USD.

“This is the estimated profit we would make without considering other merchandise”.

Potential Partners:

v Banks.

v Traders.

v Transporting and logistics agencies.

vNational Disaster Bodies and Other Government Bodies.

vFarmers co-operatives.

v Private Sector Federations.

vMarket place associations

v Telecommunication Companies.

Information Centers set-up:

v Each country should have the main information centre that is supposed to oversee the operations in the whole country and also connect and share data with other countries.

v Every province should have an information centre to collect information for the whole province to help connect different provinces.

v All districts will have an information centre or Point of Services to collect information for the specific district.

v And also, every big market in the community should have an information Centre to help collect and upload data from sellers in the market.

v The information centres will be equipped with laptops to facilitate in accessing our application and a digital camera to help in taking pictures of the products of the sellers where necessary.

v Every information centre will have a coordinator to help in sharing information with all the other information centres and the delivery team.

Coordination Team:

Our coordination team will help in the coordination and analysis of required and available goods in all parts of the country to ensure food security and availability of enough merchandise in the whole region.

Point Of Service [POS]:

Ø Agents will be set-up in all parts of the country to provide help for people who don't have access to smartphones or the internet order their goods, and these agents will also help to provide the precise location of orders because they are more used to the places.

Ø To ease-up the process for our clients, these agents will be linked with different banks to help clients easily bank money.

TRANSPORTATION:

Ø Home Delivery: Our delivery trucks will be delivering to commodities in a given community at a specific time in order to deliver multiple deliveries at one time and reduce transportation.

Ø Long Distance Delivery: When long-distance delivery is required, the delivery team should first communicate with the coordination team of the region there going for them to oversee the number of deliveries needed in that region. This makes proper, timely, and costs efficient deliveries and also provides goods to return with from the target location to save transportation costs making "Two Deliveries With One ride".

Delivery Team:

Ø The delivery team will communicate with the logistics team to make sure of the efficient transportation of goods.

Ø They will also communicate with the coordination team to find the best route to take with many deliveries to save more transportation costs.

Cross Country Deliveries:

The cross-country deliveries will pass through the General manager of both countries to ensure secure trade transactions.

Payment Method:

Payments will be made through bank accounts and other electronic payment methods of the information centres and will be sent to the seller after delivery in order to make sure that both sides are satisfied with the transaction.

Effects Of Solution:

Ø Farmers: Farmers will be put on the world map.

Ø Cashless Economy.

Ø Youth: Youth will be provided with jobs to work in the information centres and also work as agents.

Ø Wholesalers: No more worrying for not finding people to buy your goods at the same time, "with our community your goods won't last for days", we will get the customers in a short time, and they also don't have to make more distance journeys across countries to get their supplies.

Ø Retailers: "Don't panic if you work in a place where your business is not visible, on our application the beauty of technology enlightens everything", retailers will easily get customers wherever they are, and they don't have to wake up early in the morning to purchase the goods they sell "we've got them covered".

Ø Public: "No More Journeys and Risks Going To The Market", people will stay in the comfort and safety of their home, and we will do the risky part for them.

Ø Food Security: Our idea project will ensure that there is sufficient product in all parts of the continent since we'll be having all the information in our database.

Ø Border Security: Due to the reduced movements of the entrepreneur at the border, it will help improve border security.

Ø Rate Of Spread Of COVID-19: Due to the reduced movements of people, it will reduce the spread of COVID-19 across the whole region.

Ø Government Revenue: It will help ensure efficient taxation of the buyers since all transactions will be made through the bank.

Ø Government Statistics: It will also help to provide enough data to make the country's food consumption statistics.

Ø Banks: Banks will receive more clients because all our transactions will pass through bank systems.

Target Market:

ü Wholesalers and Retailers

ü Industries

ü Farmers.

ü The whole community.

Potential Partners

ü Private Sector Federations.

ü Banks

ü Telecom companies.

ü Entrepreneurs.

ü Government bodies i.e Ministry of Food and Nutrition Security, Ministry of Agriculture, Ministry Of Finance