Ringier Africa and One Africa Media merge to create Africa's classifieds leader
Ringier Africa and One Africa Media (OAM) will merge to create Africa’s largest classifieds group. The pan-African companies will join to produce Ringier One Africa Media (ROAM). ROAM was officially launched yesterday, and became Africa’s classifieds leader.
ROAM will comprise some of Africa’s leading homegrown brands, like OAM’s Jobberman, Brighter Monday, Cheki, BuyRent Kenya, PrivateProperty Nigeria and Ringier Africa’s Expat-Dakar, ZoomTanzania, PigiaMe.
ROAM is strategically positioned to command the market’s double digit growth, covering vertical classifieds (car, real estate and jobs) and horizontal ones (not limited to specific industries). The joint venture and further shared investment will develop a nationwide synergetic classifieds system. This will allow for improved user experience across six African countries: Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda and Senegal.
Ringier Africa will contribute its marketing and distribution capabilities to the group. Ringier will also add its knowledge of horizontal classifieds and experience in applying local and international knowledge to developing markets. OAM will contribute its state-of-the-art technology and knowledge of serving professional traders with vertical classifieds. Additionally, OAM is backed by US-based Tiger Global Management and Australian-based SEEK (a leading employment classifieds group)
One Africa Media’s CEO Justin Clark will become Acting CEO of ROAM. Clarke commented: “We have been looking for the right strategic partner with a similar broad vision for classifieds in Africa and who has a deep understanding of how things work in this complex continent as well as the long term commitment to stay the distance in some very large but early stage markets. We have known Ringier Africa for many years as we have both pioneered these markets in parallel and are really excited to be joining hands at last. The synergies are huge and we fit so well together.”
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