Purpose Black Ethiopia, which is a dynamic business established to offer an economic solution with an end-to-end product-to-consumer, officially started selling its shares following its launch ceremony which was held on Saturday July 24, 2021 with the attendance of different government officials, founders and guests.
Purpose Black was founded with a goal of helping black farmers to produce globally competitive products and get fair prices for their products, and has also aims of reducing youth unemployment, promoting diaspora investment, selling products at a fair price and stabilizing the consumer market by promotion of export and increase of foreign currency earnings. Furthermore, it is keen on facilitating agricultural technology transfer.
“As the name indicates, the goal of Purpose Black is to offer economic solutions to some of the major problems of the black people all over the world, and through digital economy it will create a fruitful and thriving economy and thus the first model for the implementation of the global initiative of purpose black is purpose black Ethiopia,” said Fisseha Eshetu /MD/ founder of the platform.
As he explains, the first target is to mobilize capital and to this end, the platform is planning to raise about ten billion birr in capital through three ways; selling share locally, mobilizing the diaspora, and through propose black Africa which is targets to collect ten billion dollar to distribute all over the continent of which Ethiopia will benefit through the same.
As stated the company will sell shares through the 17 banks, financial institutions and telebirr which is also is one of the options alongside CBE birr and other digital wallets. Those who are abroad can get the share through a credit card from Abyssinia bank and commercial bank of Ethiopia. Similarly, depositing in swift accounts or money transfer platforms using the commercial bank are ways of purchasing the shares. For those who do not have bank access, they can get the share in Ethiopian embassies.
The company has prepared 10 billion shares which each is worth 100 birr and the minimum share one can buy is 10 shares worth 1000 birr. Also they are required to pay only 25 percent of the payment which is 250 birr and the rest can be paid in 2 years’ time interval. This of course is made in a way that makes the system accessible for all.
“Since it is working on an end-to-end service starting from the farmer system it is not fully dependent on technology or e-commerce. The technology in the middle is a system to make it successful,” explained Fisseha, adding, “We are trying to bring both the retail and hybrid ecommerce, so the distribution will be through the ecommerce and retail channels. To realize this, we will build five hyper markets in Addis Ababa, ten supermarkets and 1000 retail stores which will be all over the country. For those who can get access to the internet, they can use the ecommerce, whereas the others can use the retail channels, and thus it’s dynamic in this regard.”