Africa’s super app Sasai recently launched Sasai Watch a platform that the company hopes will become the largest library of African user-generated content. To follow up that announcement, Cassava has said that Sasai Watch and Moments will be free over the festive season.
“This is a gift to Sasai users in Zimbabwe for the festive period. We sincerely hope that users can take advantage of this special offer to explore and enjoy these features, and to reach out to their friends and family during the holidays at a time everyone is encouraged to maintain social distancing due to the threat of Covid-19,”
Tapera Mushoriwa, Sasai Chief Operating Officer (via The Chronicle)
The free access period ends on the 15th of January 2021 and as much as this is a gift, it is also Sasai’s way of saying “come and use our new product Sasai Watch”.
The platform (Sasai Watch) is looking to take on YouTube, TikTok and others but with features better suited for Africa. Chief among those features is mobile money integration. If you want to be a content creator on YouTube, for example, you’ll have to use payment options that might not be easy to access where you live.
“We have delivered a product which will address concerns that have been raised over similar platforms that have been viewed as less favourable to African content creators, in terms of reach, compensation, and payment methods,”
Tapera Mushoriwa, Sasai Chief Operating Officer
Sasai Watch including mobile money will definitely help get more creators who otherwise couldn’t make a living on international platforms. Another thing going for the Sasai’s Watch product is the ad revenue splits. When the product launched the folks at Cassava said they are going to be taking far less than the bigger content platforms.
Sasai Watch could work but…
I’m still leaning on the side of “this could work for Sasai”. But they have to get local content creators from other platforms. If people see Comic Pastor, BusStop TV and Madam Boss produce content that is exclusive to Sasai Watch then they will see more users move to the platform.
On top of that, the Sasai bundle is pretty cheap compared to all the other bundles offered by Econet. If they can market the affordability of accessing the app as well as have exclusive content from local content creators this might just work.
You should also check out the episode of Technikari where we delved deeper into Sasai Watch:
Technikari Ep 5: Sasai Watch is set to take on YouTube in Africa. Will it work?
