STARTUP
JOKKO Africa
JOKKO Africa is an identification & collaboration tool for professionals across Africa. They give users the ability to gain visibility based on their unique and transferable skills, interact with other professionals in their community and across Africa, and ultimately, have their career-related communications using JOKKO as a messaging platform.
JOKKO Africa's Story
After years of being a mentor to early-stage startups across Africa, and getting involved within the educational & startup ecosystems, Paul, founder of JOKKO, came to the realization that in any formalization process the first step is effective identification. And the knowledge professionals across Africa, with a median age of 19 years old, working in a mobile-first continent where +70% of the economy is informal, they can only rely on having a standard CV format for their own visibility/identification as a professional. If the standard CV format is being put into question across developed economies where the corporate world represents most of the economy, in the socio-economic & technological context of Africa, it is simply obsolete already. Paul explored how identification as a professional could be rethought to tackle the inequality of access to career development opportunities tied to position-based identification (job title, the reputation of employer/educator), leverage mobile technology, and adapt to the changing nature of work. JOKKO was tested in 24 countries and is now live with active users in 14 African countries where they can share who they are as individuals among a community.