How do you get Somalis excited about shopping online?

[droid19]

Many Somali's owe or work for small business, that range from selling calling cards and sending money abroad to selling food and garments. Many of these small businesses buy or rent some space to do their business while they can be conducted from home using the internet which will save them quite a lot of overheads such as electricity and rent cost. Also since the internets allows the small to appear big they can compete with bigger companies that still use bricks and mortar.

 

However I am thinking the reason why these small business don't make the switch is because their clients are not that tech savvy to buy their products online. So to get to the point my question is how do you get these people to start using the internet and shopping online?

 

I know the younger generation are very tech savvy and comfortable shopping online but most Somali businesses are aimed at the older less tech savvy generation. I've seen and heard various schemes aimed towards getting them online but I've never heard or seen an actual success story.

[Thierry.]

This is a very important topic walaal

 

The internet has made it a lot easier to a run a business and Somalis could benefit a lot from running their operations online.

 

But this is not only a Somali problem most of the baby boomers don’t even have a email address (John McCain) let alone shop online, I think the focus in our case should be the younger generations who after studies and work will either start their own enterprises or evolve the parents one into a more tech savvy business.

 

The only problem now is that most of the young are Tech consumers rather than producers, so if they could use the parents entrepreneurial spirit along with their new skills then Bob is your uncle