This episode of The Trajectory Africa features Firas Ahmad, CEO of Sarafu, a B2B e-commerce platform, and AzamPay, a payments platform, both in Tanzania. Firas shares his approach to running a digital commerce business—focusing on delivering premium service to customers who are willing to pay, running data-driven operations, and turning cost centers into revenue generators. He also explains why informal markets are more optimized than they appear, why making analog processes digital isn't enough to win, and how you balance value creation with value capture.
[00:00] - Introduction
[02:00] - Corporate intrapreneurship and digitizing last mile distribution
[11:43] - Monetizing price transparency and efficiency and serving premium informal retailers
[33:28] - Asset-heavy vs. asset-light strategies
[41:23] - Viability of pure play B2B e-commerce businesses and Sarafu’s business model
[53:05] - Sarafu’s ecosystem approach
[59:00] - First principle (value creation vs. value capture)
Recommendations:
Connect on social media: