Nigeria's first commodity trading marketplace OyaOya.com goes live

A commodity trading marketplace has gone live, it is on www.oyaoya.com and it aims to connect the commodity ecosystem across Nigeria and Africa.

The OyaOya platform is a marketplace for vendors to present their products, allows customers to select a product, commodity transporters and an escrow payment system for secure transactions.

Chief Executive Officer, OyaOya, Khalil Halilu announced the pilot run of the marketplace on www.oyaoya.com with 3,000+ registered vendors.

“Nigeria and other African economies are projected to increase shares of the global sales due to growing participation in e-commerce and accelerated growth forecast expected out of developing economies,” OyaOya CEO said.

“OyaOya aims to have 10% of farmers and 40% of petroleum product traders on its platform by the end of 2018”, Halilu said while explaining that the platform will also provide a one-stop-shop for commodity market information.

“We are also mindful that today’s urban dweller is a very busy person. He or she does not have the time to go out for cooking gas or shop around for groceries. Similarly, businesses want access to the best items at the best prices, delivered to them with ease. This is where OyaOya comes in. The platform provides the customer access to vendors, giving him or her choices based on brand, price, time it takes to deliver and even a vendors rating by other customers”, Halilu said.

OyaOya also aims to fill the gap for driving efficiency and effective distribution across Nigeria and other African economies, also the escrow payment system will compliment government’s effort going cashless he added.

“OyaOya is an enterprise based on our user friendly online platform designed to connect customers to vendors within close proximity for easy and secure on demand transactions. We believe that buying and selling does not have to be tedious, or time-consuming. We do all the heavy-lifting so you do not have to. We bring a highly innovative and confident team together to make sure we deliver value and quality, when and where you need it – no hassle, no hustle”, Halilu said.

“It is settled long ago that Africa is the commodity-capital of the world, yet the continent has not been able to effectively distribute its resources amongst its people. Farmers face several challenges including trying to get their products to market, inadequate information on how, where and at what price to sell produce. This is compounded by customers not being able to locate them, a mismatch between transporters and owners of commodities, among other factors that have undermined the global competitiveness of the local commodity merchants.”

“Commodity prices are volatile and extremely difficult to predict and this is due to several challenges faced in the African commodity ecosystem. Some products like petroleum are priced high while some agricultural products are underpriced. Take Benue State for example in the Middle Belt of Nigeria where farmers tend to lose their produce to decay as they cannot get access to customers on time, resulting in losses in both produce and profit.”

The platform is reportedly working with reputable organisations such as Interswitch, National Association of Road Transport Owners NARTO, Nigeria Incentive-Based Risk Sharing System for Agricultural Lending NIRSAL, Nigeria Commodity Exchange Commission, Independent Marketers Association of Nigeria IPMAN, Cement Manufacturers Association of Nigeria CMAN, Nigerian Association of Liquefied Petroleum Gas Marketers and several Agricultural cooperatives.

“OyaOya will become a household name in Africa for efficient delivery of quality goods by bringing client and vendor together on a simple, competitive online platform”, according to the CEO.

The OyaOya app is available on Apple App Store and Google Play Store.