Time for homegrown passenger transportation App

A bicycle, a motorcycle, or a car can be someone’s dream to better his or her life. In a place like Tanga City, we have bicycle taxis. When we were growing up, there were stories of people who started as bicycle taxi riders, and over time they graduated to own fleets of cars.

There is a story of a young man (whom I know) who has been working very hard using a Boda Boda (motorcycle taxi). He used to work such long hours to better his life. He started saving his money to upgrade his business into an uber driver. He spent about two years saving the money and finally shifted from bodaboda into the car taxi business via taxi-hailing apps.

His dream came true three months ago after he imported a car for the taxi business.

When he received his car, he was very excited and started working using the taxi-hailing app to make a living. His dream is to save money again so that with time he will purchase another car for taxi services, and later on buy a lorry for the goods transport business.

He is now devastated as the taxi app he is using has introduced some changes by accepting only corporate clients (pay by using cards only). I can guess in the last few years ago, many people have bought cars to work with Uber or Bolt.

Note that, initially, this young man intended to work with Uber, the world’s number one passenger requesting taxi services app. Very unfortunately, in April this year, as his car was on the way coming, Uber stopped offering car taxi services in Tanzania.

He was a bit frustrated, thanks to the existence of other taxi-hailing apps like Bolt, the then main competitor of Uber. Recently, Bolt has also announced changes for its car services by only being available for corporate passengers.

The advantage of the taxi apps, was the low and affordable prices for passengers.

On the other hand, people with cars could easily get into business via the applications. Therefore, the applications have been of great help to both passengers and operators who can earn a living.

Uber was founded in 2009 in America by Canadian tech guru, Garrett Camp, while Bolt, originally Taxify, was founded in 2013 by a 19-year-old high school student, Markus Villig in Estonia (Northern Europe). The business model for both is simple- aggregate taxis into one platform.

Today, millions of passengers depend on the two apps for easy and convenient transport. This means that in Tanzania now, they are offering limited services.

This is a sad story, which hopefully, the regulators can short out. Every challenge is also an opportunity. There have been some homegrown apps offering similar services, unfortunately, they are less known.

Branding and positioning your goods and or services in the market at times mean the whole world. The point here is after a brand has sunk into people’s minds and hearts, competitors have to work harder for theirs to be noticed.

In 2017, Tigo Tanzania launched Twende App to compete with Uber and Bolt, but it has not picked up the pace.

The same for the numerous locally made car taxi apps.

One of the biggest problems in Africa is that businesses compete with each other even where they are supposed to collaborate. For example, if all the Uber and Bolt drivers in Dar es Salaam come together, get a developer to make an Uber app like, and market it as much as possible their problems would be solved.

For now, as the two leading taxi brands scale down operations, the people to suffer most are the passengers. I can see the return of the normal and high taxi prices we used to hire.

Saumu Jumanne is an Assistant Lecturer, Dar es Salaam University College of Education (DUCE)