Founded in 2016 by Alpha Barry and Thierno Diallo, Madinastores is a Guinean E-Commerce company. In the image of the craze of E-commerce in many African countries (Nigeria, Ivory Coast, Morocco etc.), Madinastores ambition to create a functional “Guinean” e-commerce site, pleasant to use, effective and especially secure.

Introduce yourself and your journey
We are Alpha BARRY and Thierno DIALLO Founding partners of Madinastores, company created in 2016.
We have respectively ten years of experience in the fields of Data Science, Big Data, Digital and Web Development.
With these diverse experiences, we initiated this project to promote new technologies in general and e-commerce especially on the African continent.

What is your project and your mission?
“To be clear, we want to make madinastores.com, the first e-commerce site in Guinea.”

Like the craze of E-commerce in many African countries (Nigeria, Côte d’Ivoire, Morocco etc.), we have the ambition to create a functional “Guinean” e-commerce site, pleasant to use, effective and above all secure. It is important for us to provide our customers with a site respecting the E-commerce spirit:

● Provision of a detailed catalog of products
● Secure online payment with multiple payment methods (PayPal, Visa, Mastercard, Orange Money)
● Warranty offer to customers for purchased items
● Customer order tracking
● Delivery of orders to customers
● After-sales service (Hotline, SAV at Madinastores headquarters)
● Online chat 24/7 on the site

The goal is also to meet the growing needs of expatriates, the diaspora and Guineans who want products with European standards.

How did you get the idea to start your business?
Africa is often associated with poverty and technological backwardness.
But two indices are in perpetual growth: The young population and the growth of the mobile equipment rate.
With the internet and social networks, the world has become a great showcase where articles, gadgets, devices or accessories of all kinds are visible. This undeniably creates needs and desires at the level of African populations, and E-commerce responds perfectly to this craze.

The growing needs of expatriates and the diaspora who wish to settle in guinea and to obtain products from Europe is notable.
With the improvement of their purchasing power, many Guineans from these middle classes are seeking better quality products at better prices.

These observations led us to mount this project and to launch madinastores.com.

Can you introduce your team?
The Madinastores team is composed of a dozen people including a web developer, a web designer, a logistics manager, a computer specialist (network maintenance) and four sales representatives.

What is the problem solved by Madinastores?
The concept of E-commerce is not new in Guinea and despite the interests of entrepreneurs in this sector, it is still immature but very promising.
With Madinastores.com, we want to bring this maturity and install it seriously in the daily life of Guineans.
The problems we are currently responding to vary according to the type of clientele.
Many Guineans are often unable to find quality items in Guinea, so they often seek knowledge abroad to buy and ship items they want. This often raises coordination and logistical concerns.

With Madinastores.com, the customer can place the order wherever he has access to the internet and benefit from home delivery (Guinea). He also has an after-sales service with the Madinastores team in Guinea.
We also have among our clients, companies from the private sector who find through our platform and our services, a solution to their needs (materials, supplies, equipment, etc …).

Our platform offers a wide range of products that meet the needs of Guinean consumers.
Online purchases are secure and guaranteed. Payment security standards meet the European standard.
We guarantee our products and delivery times are 1 to 2 days for products available in our stocks, then 4 to 5 weeks for our items to ship from Europe.

We also meet the needs of customers who want to be delivered in France. We are already part of the landscape of E-commerce in France thanks to the deliveries we make throughout the French territory.

What are the next steps ?
Grow, grow and grow, to be present throughout the national and regional territory.

On a national level
● We have ambitions to employ young people to train them in digital, e-commerce.
● Contribute to local economic growth by supporting local artisans / traders and micro entrepreneurs to promote their products internationally.
● Put in place an efficient and reliable logistics to be able to deliver customers (individuals or companies) inside the country

At the regional level
● Extend the concept to the countries of the sub-region (Mali, Sierra Leone, Liberia etc.)
● Integrate local products from the sub-region into the Madinastores catalog, for example to enable a Guinean client to discover, buy and deliver local Malian or Sierra Leonean products.

What do you need and how can AfrikaTech help you?
We want to improve our international and national visibility.
AfrikaTech is an excellent channel to introduce us to the Tech business sector in Africa and also to be a vehicle for networking with professional partners.

What are the contacts of the company?
Platform for delivery in Guinea: https://madinastores.com/
Platform for delivery in France: https://fr.madinastores.com/
Email: contact@madinastores.com
Phone: +33769047959
Links to social networks
Twitter: https://twitter.com/madinastoresGN
Facebook: https://fr-fr.facebook.com/gn.madinastores/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/madinastores/

About The Author

CEO AfrikaTech

Comme beaucoup de personnes j’ai connu l’Afrique à travers des stéréotypes : l’Afrique est pauvre, il y a la guerre, famine… Je suis devenu entrepreneur pour briser ces clichés et participer à la construction du continent. J’ai lancé plusieurs entreprises dont Kareea (Formation et développement web), Tutorys (Plate-forme de e-learning), AfrikanFunding (Plate-forme de crowdfunding). Après un échec sur ma startup Tutorys, à cause d’une mauvaise exécution Business, un manque de réseau, pas de mentor, je suis parti 6 mois en immersion dans l’écosystème Tech au Sénégal. J’ai rencontré de nombreux entrepreneurs passionnés, talentueux et déterminés. A mon retour sur Paris je décide de raconter leur histoire en créant le média AfrikaTech. L'objectif est de soutenir les entrepreneurs qui se battent quotidiennement en Afrique en leur offrant la visibilité, les connaissances, le réseautage et les capitaux nécessaires pour réussir. L'Afrique de demain se construit aujourd'hui ensemble. Rejoignez-nous ! LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/boubacardiallo

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