Tech in Africa
In a world where many people claim they can offer certain services or offer a given skill, it all narrows down to whom among the qualified persons is the most trustworthy. To put this into perspective, any skilled worker can get a job done, but do they all have the character or professionalism you want around your home or business?
As a South African startup targeting the low and middle-skilled workers, Umwuga has created a disruptive, if not an innovative way of going around this, where employers can vet skills, capability, and reputation. Simply put, Umwuga is a worker-first social network helping semi and mid-skilled workers build their reputations so as to enable them to get easily hired. Meanwhile, employers get people they can also trust.
Umwuga was officially launched in December 2020 by Nasi Rwigema and targets cleaners and other handy persons across Johannesburg. Since its launch, the company remains laser-focused on serving domestic housekeepers, handymen/women, and the household individuals who employ them in Johannesburg. The company’s expansion plans are now geared towards occupations it supports and regions that drive the market thickness. From cleaners and handy workers, Umwuga is growing to include every other form of semi and mid-skilled work. The startup’s regional expansion will maintain an emerging markets focus.
In a statement shared to Tech in Africa, Nasi Rwigema said, “At Umwuga, we are proud to put our “worker” members first. In doing so, we choose not to charge any commissions or fees when connecting them with work opportunities. Since we don’t make money in the match-making process, our members are free to negotiate their own terms with employers, decide how and when they want to get paid, and keep using their favorite other ways of finding work. We simply hope they come back to Umwuga to collect their performance reviews in a single online profile that they can share everywhere to get more and better work.”
Umwuga saves you the trouble of spending hours looking for the right person for a job. Through the platform, one can zero in on the best workers based on their character, capability, and trust. Umwuga achieves this by crowdsourcing the recruitment vetting process to sieve out the hardworking, trustworthy, and skilled individuals capable of helping one get the job done.
As a company offering an innovative recruitment solution bound to disrupt the local market, Umwuga is confident of its phenomenal brand having bootstrapped without any external funding. South Africa is the sub-Saharan base where Umwuga plans to spring from as it tries to expand its footprint into Nigeria, Kenya, Sudan, Angola, Ghana, Cameroon, and Côte d’Ivoire. With time they shall also delve into the emerging markets of Latin America and Southeast Asia.
Find out more on Umwuga at its website.
