This episode is brought to you by PureVPN; a secure, fast, private, and unrestricted way to access the internet. FULL TRANSCRIPT Narrator: Growing up in Mali, Moulaye Tabouré was quite passionate about art and fashion. His studies took him to France, where he noticed the trend of Europeans taking particular interest in art and fashion depicting African culture. Moulaye Tabouré: We realised that first, a lot of the artisans’ work that we had and came with from Africa were actually very praised and looked forward to in Europe Narrator: That’s Moulaye Tabouré, co-founder and CEO of Ivorian-based eCommerce platform, Afrikrea. In 2010, after over 5 years studying in France, Moulaye returned to Mali to work as an auditor with PricewaterhouseCoopers and, later, Alstrom. It was during this period that Mali came under intense pressure from militant Islamist terror groups like Ansar Dine. Moulaye Tabouré: So the country was closing up; less and less tourism. Meaning more and more artisans were actually struggling to keep up. So they were starting to move away from ancestral craftsmanship to going to work, for example, in the mines just trying to survive and make ends meet for their families Narrator: Meanwhile, a different group of designers began to gain international recognition from names like Burberry and IKEA fabrics because of their modern twist to African fashion. Moulaye says these separate events led him to seriously consider how best to help African designers overcome their dependence on tourism to sell their products.  On this episode of Built in Africa, we put the spotlight on how Ivorian startup, Afrikrea, is building the online infrastructure for African culture commerce. Moulaye quickly realised that he could not start this project alone. So he reached out to his long-time friend, Kadry Diallo. Together, they began working on his idea as a side project codenamed ‘Afrikrea’. This was in 2014.  Moulaye Tabouré: We noticed that in pretty much any country you go in the world, you have a museum for African art, you have people that sell African items in shops or any other market. Unfortunately, these artisans themselves in Africa, the ones creating it, the ones actually initiating all of these are not getting most of the value.  Narrator: According to Statista, Africa’s eCommerce opportunity is estimated to be around $19.8 billion. On the other hand, McKinsey & Company estimates that by 2025, the local manufacturing industry will grow to more than $900 billion. While this shows signs of promise for African online retailers to pursue a global push for Africa’s fashion industry, issues have come up to stifle collective progress. For one, cross-border shipping and handling, and marketing are barriers to African fashion designers reaching global demand actively. Similarly, difficulties arising from accepting online payments from platforms like Shopify exist. As with other eCommerce platforms, Shopify encourages African online retailers but does not build its platform to cater to their specific needs like payments. These were the problems Moulaye and Kadry sought to solve with Afrikrea. Their research led them to studying business models of successful art-based online marketplaces like US-based Etsy. Moulaye Tabouré: If people could make DIY products in the US and sell them for billions of dollars on Etsy. It didn’t make sense that we couldn’t make something similar for African creatives recognised all over the world. Narrator