Strive Masiyiwa took to his Facebook to announce that Sasai is launching a payment service in a week’s time. In his FB post, he talked about Sasai Pay in the context of consumers buying audio/video/music content online to solve the problems of piracy.
In a post published yesterday, Econet Global’s Chairman announced that the platform will soon enable African content creators to create and share content on Sasai with 3 new features:
- Moments – This will enable content creators to make short video content of up to 5 minutes;
- Watch – Extended length video content (up to an hour according to Masiyiwa’s post);
- Podcast – described as ideal for audio content and storytelling.
Where will Sasai Pay fit in all of this?
In a follow-up post to his announcement of the new content creation features Mr Masiyiwa explained that Sasai Pay will be used to pay for the content created on the Sasai platform;
The Sasai Content Platform is meant to create a Market Place, where hopefully millions of people will come to see the content from Africa. They will be able to pay using Sasai Pay [when it is fully operational next week]. Then there is the cost of data to see content Online. This is why I’m developing WIFI Finder.
All this takes creative entrepreneurship and investment. It takes time and patience.
Sasai is working on a content creation platform and from Masiyiwa’s explanation this will be a content creation hub for Africa first;
What I really want is a platform where Africans can express themselves, and showcase their amazing creative talents: from modern and traditional African music and storytelling (go interview your grandmother!) for instance, to futuristic programming to create video games. Africa is a bit behind on this one!
There isn’t much in the way of detail regarding whether all content will be behind a paywall or if content creators will be able to actually determine which section of their content is free and which is paid.
Currently, in the Sasai app, the Sasai Pay section is now present but trying to use the feature prompts the user to be a bit more patient as the feature is labelled to be “coming soon”.
Sasai Watch
This section of the application has a bit of information we can glean on. For starters Sasai Watch will use algorithms to suggest content.
After opening the Watch tab, I was prompted to select 5 topics of interest. At the time of writing there isn’t much in the way of content which is not surprising as there aren’t many content creators right now.
20 comments
Useless app
Revise your words
These guys are really up to something big. Im already starting to see the direction and lm already excited.
They should make it like onlyfans cause I really need a place to monetize my nudes😨😨
Hahaha
haha! That’s actually a use case – quite controversial but it will definitely pull people
I believe that these are early days so not much will exist by way of content.
Will Nigerians be able to use it?
Yeah, it seems that will be the case because they are talking about an African marketplace for content
He is up to something mind you chineese use alipay, wechat pay it’s going to be an online trading platform like alibaba I guess for Africans
Great to see the angle they are trying the moment you involve content it = entertainment and where there is entertainment you are bound to get people coming to watch or listen and hopefully pay, may not be much in the beginning, but definitely well positioned for africa’s near future. I am a christian author (with books) and content creator, with courses on froex trading and book self-publishing too. Am willing to give it a shot. Considering I had hardly used the app just installed and uninstalled. If creators can monetise their content easily without too many restrictions whilst giving value to the visitor, then it could work.
Already youtube has some high limits as far as channels are concerned.
As long as Sasai does not focus on Zim only but Africa as they echo. This could actually work. Content is what makes the internet after all. Hope it works, they have tried so many angles so far.
Whilst I do agree this innovation is a step in the right direction however after using the app for a few days so far I do have some reservations. My main reservation is with the monetization of creators content as that is a complex issue that can make or break the success of the application. My only other reservation is that the app may end up becoming resource heavy considering all the features it has. What this means is that a robust phone may be needed to gain the functionality of the app which may not feasible for everyone.
Yeah it’s not exactly clear how that monetization will be implemented but I guess we will know more in a week’s time when Sasai Pay launches
Yeah if they can get widely followed content creators to post to Sasai exclusively they could acquire some customers but it’s not clear if they are willing to invest the money necessary to get content creators on the platform.
This Sasai App was stolen from a guy called Artwell Makumbe,he is the 1 who created Sasai App.And he is the owner of hiclicker….😂😂😂😂
Africans
Good strategy! A content creation platform for Africans is needed. The space is largely untapped and if he pulls it off Africa rises to the next level. Good thing he euthanized products like Kwese TV. If one project fails, one must quickly learn from mistakes and approach things from another angle.
When you say untapped what exactly do you mean? Is the monetisation of African content untapped or is it the absence of content platforms?
The latter
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