EIPA FORGES WAY FORWARD FOR E-COMMERCE PLATFORM

MBABANE – The Eswatini Investment Promotion Authority (EIPA) has made significant strides in developing Eswatini’s e-commerce platform.

EIPA CEO Sibani Mngomezulu said as they have seen e-commerce steps taken by countries, institutions and private companies around the world, to widen their trade scope, they found it necessary to develop an online portal, www.buyeswatini.com, which will be a trading hub for local buyers and sellers. Mngomezulu said EIPA is working with all economic sectors in the kingdom, making sure that trade is represented holistically on the new platform, reflecting all goods and services available in the country in the process exposing local production to buyers and sellers domestically and abroad.

“Yes, we did achieve having companies / traders listed on the buyeswatini.com platform, but that was not enough, so we looked for partners to work with, who can introduce the missing components for the platform to be transactional, which include introducing payment platforms and delivery services,” he said.

Digitalisation

The CEO mentioned that based on the existing diplomatic relations between the Kingdom of Eswatini and Taiwan, a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) was signed regarding the Business Digitalisation Project.  He said this was done in May this year in Taiwan. Subsequently, follow-up meetings have been held to further discuss the execution of such an exercise, which led to the identification of the International Integrated System Inc (IISI), a Taiwan-based company specialising in developing e-commerce platforms to assist  traders. He said in this regard they will not move away from the known name of buyeswatini.com, but we will name it buyeswatini 2.0, which simple says they are introducing new additions; a payment function and a delivery function. He said IISI will help in the design and develop the App for the Android version, and will ensure that they conduct rigorous testing to ensure app reliability and user-friendliness.  

Operation

Mngomezulu said to this far, with IISI, they have engaged with local stakeholders and partners whom they view as critical to the development and the effective functioning of the new buyeswatini 2.0 platform. He highlighted that a workshop was held in October this year, where a briefing on the Eswatini Business Digitalisation Development Project was presented by partners, the IISI, and the CEO of Wonderful Food presented an existing Agricultural e-commerce operation, with a Taiwan Experience. Further to that, one-on-one meetings were held with the purpose of scanning the enabling institutions which include, traders, payment gateway platform companies, ICT regulators, manufacturers, university and business support institutions.

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