Profile for the 12 th winner of the Africa Expo 2019

Name: Bessan Eliezer Augustino AGBEMAVO

Nationality: Benin

Title of Innovation: BOOKCONEKT.COM

Country/Countries of implementation: Benin

Number of years implemented: 8

Category Top 40

Problem being solved: Less than 1 in 3 schools in Benin have a library, denying students the chance to gain crucial knowledge and language skills. Lack of access quality reading materials lead to poor academic performance and high school graduates often cannot express themselves clearly in either writing or speaking, compromising their future. Parents and young adult can currently access books by visiting libraries and bookstores, most of which are located in Cotonou and not accessible online. This means traveling in heavy traffic for hours and spending time searching products from store to store with deception when books needed is not found

Description of innovation: We are a social start-up that aims to improve literacy rates by providing affordable and universal access to quality reading materials. With one click, BOOKCONEkT.COM provides access to any books anytime, anywhere through a mobile and virtual library and bookshop. Users can either buy or borrow whether virtual or hard books with delivering at home.

Parents and young adults are our primary customers. They represent a market estimated at $200 million. we are their preferred choice.

1. Low cost: Our website offers the lowest prices, and saves our customers the time and cost of travelling to bookshops or libraries

2. Convenience & safety: Kids can access products through our online catalogue without having to take public transport.

3. Variety: We offer academic books, romance, novels, comics, African and local productions.

4. Re-sell option: we are starting the first-ever Benin online book market (second hand) space where people can sell their used books and get income. Low income users will be able to buy used books at cheaper prices, and resell them later.

5. Single platform: We partnered with local bookshops to use our platform to reach more customers instead of building their own online presence. Moreover, we will offer advertising to publishing houses and authors to promote their productions.

Early-adopters of our website are 80% parents and 20% young adults or school students. We take advantage of a rapidly growing digital commerce market in Benin to overcome financial and geographical barriers to reading.

Unique outcomes and Impact

December 2017-January2018: Initial landing page launched; $50 profit and 30 books sold within 2-month test period

2017-2018: $6050 raised from Tony Elumelu Entrepreneurship program 2017 and competition Get In The Ring Cotonou 2018

August 2018: BOOKCONEKT.COM launched, offering mobile bookshop and library including e-payment through MTN Mobile Money. In 6 months we received 5000+ visits and distributed 100+ books with $300 in revenue and growing followers on Twitter and Facebook.

Partnerships: Agreement with Transportation Company, 5 famous publishing houses, 2 physical libraries.

Training: Mandela Washington Fellowship 2018, etristars.com 2018

Replication and Sustainability: We will just need to have sales team in countries. They will negotiate partnership with local bookshop and library to upload their content on the platform. Then, we will create an adaptation for each country like BOOKCONEKT.SN for Senegal. We will do like amazon or jumia. The sales team will communicate about the book-market place so that people upload their books to be sold. The book market place will be very useful as most of our population has a very low income.