Alert! In a sign of greater economic cooperation between African regions, top SA online retailer Kalahari.net has expanded to Kenya, opening its new east African storefront, Kalahari.co.ke, over the weekend.
Here’s a screenshot of the Kalahari.co.ke’s landing page, which is a pared-down version of its SA cousin’s:
Whereas Kalahari.net sells everything from jewellery to appliances to postbox renewals, in addition to books and dvds, the Kenyan version of the site is sticking with the entertainment basics for now: books, music, movies and toys, with a few digital cameras thrown in (get the Olympus FE-45 for just Ksh 16,220.55!).
Customers in Kenya can purchase Kalahari.co.ke products with a credit card or with M-Pesa, one of the country’s e-currencies.
The main reason that this is news for BOOK SA readers, of course, is that Kalahari’s move opens up a new African market for SA books. It would seem that Kalahari.net’s complete books catalogue has been incorporated into Kalahari.co.ke’s offerings. Compare, for instance, these two searches for Kgebetli Moele’s books:
They’re identical – except for the costs and delivery times. The main thing is, the books are in the store – meaning publishers don’t need to do any extra work to get their titles farther afield in Africa. Just sign up for Kalahari.net’s distribution services.
Hopefully, it will be a two-way street, too, with Kalahari opening up Africa’s largest book marketplace to Kenyan publishers. This being the case, one would urge said publishers to register with the company as soon as possible.
Coincidentally – or not – today’s the day that the Amazon Kindle starts shipping internationally, bringing wireless delivery of hundreds of thousands of ebooks within the reach of readers in South Africa and Kenya alike. One wonders if Amazon’s ambitions forced Kalahari’s hand at all – a case of the river moving the desert, as it were – or whether the rollout to Kenya has long been in the works.
BOOK SA eagerly awaits the opening of Kalahari’s Nigeria storefront. It surely must be next?
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October 20th, 2009 @07:52 #
This is great news!
Exporting books from SA to Kenya was arduous, to put it mildly.
Kalahari.net has dug the channel.
I genuinely hope publishing houses from SA will make the effort to get their barges moving to East Africa now.
Congrats to Kalahari for doing an amazing thing.
October 20th, 2009 @11:47 #
All good news. Hopefully, we'll see this kind of river traffic flowing between other parts of the continent.
October 21st, 2009 @17:31 #
Thanks for the link, elmiagikenya. Here's the clickable one to "Rachel's Bargain Corner" e-shop: http://www.enrakenya.com/ . Quite nifty.