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Douglas Mboweni

Business Reporter
Econet Wireless has committed to helping businesses, mostly local small enterprises, to generate more income using its products and services.

“We want our customers, who are increasingly running their own businesses, to see our network as a partner who will help them make more money,” said Econet Wireless chief executive Douglas Mboweni.

The chief executive officer of Zimbabwe’s largest mobile phone operator said that “it’s no longer enough to offer cheaper calls, we need to help businesses to make more money using our services.”

Unveiling a new service called OWNAI, which helps businesses to sell their products, Mr Mboweni said, “We have products and services which can be used as tools to make your business more effective.”

OWNAI is an e-commerce Marketplace allowing Econet customers to market their products for free to over 10,2 million registered Econet customers.

“It is not possible to get that kind of market exposure, except through Econet,” said Mr Mboweni. Available on both mobile and desktop platforms, OWNAI allows Econet subscribers to buy new and pre-owned items at highly affordable prices, and it takes less than 30 seconds to post for free ad and start selling to interested buyers.

Mr Mboweni said the service is also available non-Econet customers who can access the marketplace platform and search for goods.

He said the new service will not lead to the spread of “spam” SMS messages, and emphasised that Econet will not send customers adverts. Rather, he said customers choose to see adverts posted by others.

“We have invested heavily in sophisticated spam and fraud-detection software and we will moderate every ad before it is published on OWNAI,” he said.

This dovetails into Government’s medium term economic blueprint, Zim-Asset covering the period 2013 to 2018, to support growth of small to medium enterprises and development of co-operatives.