2016 ICT4D Conference

Mozambique is a typical African emerging market, but with a growing economy (GDP growth rate of 7%) and high disparities in the living conditions of the majority of the population. In late 2011, my co-founder and I became aware of a discrepancy in the Mozambican labor market: most job positions were being advertised daily on a mere 15,000 copies of the largest local newspaper, while Mozambique's population was nearly 25 million people. As a result, potential candidates were unaware of relevant job opportunities while companies struggled to find local talent. Set to democratize the information in the labor market, we developed emprego.co.mz an online job board that would later become the largest in the country. It currently engages over 80,000 followers on social media, hosts 15,000 daily visits and has more than 70,000 registered candidates.
Despite its success, the focus on Internet users, accounted only for 10% of the population. Additionally, we became aware of the fact that there where only 700,000 formal jobs in Mozambique. Statistics are inconsistent when it comes to employment - official levels state 17% of unemployment even though around 95% of the country's economy is informal. Given this high level of informality and the realization that we've been catering for a fairly privileged niche, we then crafted a solution for informal handymen with access to basic mobile phones.
We developed Biscate, a hybrid technology (Web & USSD) to connect blue-collar workers (e.g. carpenters, painters), with no Internet access, to labor seekers on the web. Biscate aims to increase job opportunities at the BOP, fostering competitiveness and skill building, making a significant contribution to social inclusion by linking 2 social classes through a mutual need.