Genesis buys OLX's 5 African market to build up classifieds ad site Jiji

Jiji, a classifieds listing giant in Nigeria, has bought out part of OLX's African business from Naspers, according to Ukrainian Genesis.

What is Jiji

Jiji is a portfolio asset of Ukrainian Genesis. This classified ads site that targets mobile users was launched back in 2016. In 2018, the project sidelined OLX from Nigerian market. Subsequently, OLX closed its local office and its traffic was significantly lower than that of its competitor.

The deal

According to the terms of the deal, Nigerian users of OLX will be redirected to Jiji website. In addition, Jiji has acquired the business of OLX in 4 other countries of the region: Kenia, Ghana, Uganda, Tanzania. Their users will also be redirected to the new site. It is expected that the total number of monthly unique users of the project will reach 8 million.

According to Vladimir Mnogoletniy, co-founder of Genesis and head of the board of directors of Jiji, acquisition of OLX facilitates the creation of one of the largest classified ads sites in the region:

We intend to use this deal to create the largest African classified ads business and open new opportunities for the fast-growing countries of the region with the population of 300 million people. We believe that in the next 2-3 years we will become one of the top 10 classified ads projects by traffic.

The company intends to finalize the deal in April after it gets approved by the regulators. After that, the company will launch redirect to Jiji from OLX Nigeria, OLX Ghana, OLX Kenya, OLX Tanzania, and OLX Uganda.

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