Isahit: Online Jobs for Africans

Unemployment is hitting African youth hard. With nearly 10 million young people entering the labor force each year, the trend is not about to reverse. However, new technologies bring hope because they create jobs in Africa. The start-up Isahit understood this and launched a platform to make young people work ethically.

A Dakar hiter

Launched officially in December 2016, isahit is a jobbing platform: Internet users perform tasks online and get paid for this work. Ishahit’s distinctive feature is its responsible and ethical approach. Its objective is to help combat poverty and social inequality by providing jobs for the disadvantaged. Thus, the start-up has begun to take root in 5 French-speaking African countries: Côte d’Ivoire, Cameroon, Senegal, Burkina Faso and Congo.

In concrete terms, isahit allows companies to outsource and outsource certain tasks that can be performed digitally: data processing (such as entering expense reports or archiving e-mails), content management (moderating videos or comments on a site), data analysis (categorizing photos for a catalog, filing invoices, etc.). This innovative platform incorporates Artificial Intelligence components, which process and cut these tasks, in order to distribute them to workers as micro-tasks. It also makes it easier for workers to work.
Even today, despite the sophistication of the algorithms, certain works cannot be carried out without human intervention, hence the need to use hiters, a name that designates the community of people working on the platform. The work of hitters is flexible, achievable on a mobile phone or tablet, and does not require high qualifications. So to speak, the only condition is to be able to read, write and be able to use the digital tool.

Digital micro-tasks: a digital macro-service

The Isahit platform targets 4 categories of workers. First, women who are unemployed, students with scholarships, young entrepreneurs and generally those who are unemployed but literate with a project. Isahit’s gamble: to give them a remuneration that will allow them to improve their standard of living considerably and over the long term. Isahit accompanies the workers and helps them open a bank account or gives them access to the internet through local incubators. Isahit also allows them to develop their skills, through training.

Two engineers are at the initiative of this project: Isabelle Mashola and Philippe Coup-Jambet. Both have had brilliant careers in the digital world, one in large groups and the other in start-ups. Thus, Isahit aims to recruit 10,000 “workers” in the coming years. The platform also plans to expand rapidly in other Francophone African countries, such as Mali and Benin. Above all, it is trying to conquer English-speaking Africa (Tanzania, Kenya, Ghana, Botswana…).

A small business with big plans

Its clients include a financial management company, an online image bank and e-commerce start-ups. The next step will undoubtedly be to seduce major groups of the CAC40!
At the same time, the start-up is working in partnership with the United Nations on an offer involving refugee hitters. The aim is to make it easier for these people to integrate into their host country through decent work and to create social ties for partner companies.
Finally, Isahit launched its crowdfunding campaign on the platform Afrikwity. The start-up wants to accelerate its development. Feel free to support it!

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Photo credit: isaHIT