A leading African social marketplace, MOBOfree, today announced a 274 per cent year-on-year increase in the total value of goods on their platform in Nigeria. The current value of goods is 1.97 billion dollars (N394 billion), up from 526 million dollars (N102.5 billion) last year. This growth was said to outperform the forecasted figure for 2015 by 30 per cent.

MOBOfree attributes this huge increase in the value of goods to the safety of the its platform, to an increasing number of repeated customers and to a renewed focus on the automotive and real estate categories of classified advertisements.

The Chief Executive Officer of MOBOfree, Cristobal Alonso, expressed that customers are visiting the site because of their confidence that buyers and sellers have been vetted.

“MOBOfree has invested heavily in safety and security with a recently launched ID verification programme in addition to a dedicated quality control team, which manually reviews every single advert before launching it live. This increase is indicative of a growing number of Nigerian consumers willing to buy, sell and swap stuff with people they can trust, MOBOfree makes this process easier and safer.

“MOBOfree has also hired local teams on the ground in Lagos to visit the largest car dealers and real estate agents. These teams on the ground serve to increase the adverts on the platform but more importantly, they meet car dealers in person, check the cars and take photographs of the cars themselves to ensure that car buyers on MOBOfree, get access to trustworthy car classifieds,” he added.