Weekly Round Up #13: eCommerce Africa Confex, Satya Nadella is cool and New Nintendo comes to South Africa

This week ecommerce in Africa, its challenges and successes, have been the major focus for Memeburn and Ventureburn. Andre-Pierre du Plessis and Jacques Coetzee attended eCommerce Confex and tell us all about the latest trends and happenings in the space. Is it all just hype or is there really something worth looking out for?

Out of it came interesting speeches and new startups were announced, including pick up point delivery startup Pargo and online verification service ThisIsme.

ThisIsme, a startup that wants to verify identities online, announced its service which as Jacques wrote on Ventureburn “As it stands, today you can register for your ThisIsMe account via email, verify your bank account, add supporting documents like your Identity Document and proof of residence, link to your mobile and social media account, and voila: third parties can verify you. Perhaps this sounds like a lot of effort but if all goes according to plan, you’ll only have to do this once”.

Though a lot of positive news were shared by the speakers, one speaker also urged for a reality check. Colin Fleming, Massmart’s ecommerce executive, expressed his skepticism about the talk that ecommerce in Africa is booming.

On Gearburn, we celebrated Satya Nadella’s first year anniversary at Microsoft. And announced the arrival of the new Nintendo 3DS and 3DS XL coming to South Africa 13 February.

Have a listen and let us know what you think: