Staff Reporter
Windhoek-Go Safe ‘Eenda Nawa’, the award-winning local company that was awarded the Development Bank of Namibia’s first-ever Business Innovation Award in 2014 and the NYC Youth’s Most Innovative Enterprise Award in 2016, amongst others, will officially enter the African market in 2018 from its new Johannesburg office.
The company will officially start trading in South Africa during the second half of 2018 under the brand Go Safe ‘Hamba Kahle’ road accident travel insurance cover.
The company offers affordable travel and road accident insurance, specifically designed to target unemployed, low and middle-income African road users via mobile SMS, apps and vending machines for as little as N$20. It is the first of its kind in Africa and different from the traditional insurance policies as it is technology-driven, modern, convenient, affordable and accessible by all income groups, especially those without fixed incomes, payslips or bank accounts.
The Namibian start-up recently expanded its operations to the economic capital of Africa, Johannesburg, through its official holdings company, Go Safe Africa Insurance Holdings (Pty) Ltd.
According to the managing director of Go Safe Africa, Regto David: “During our recent Go Safe engagements in Johannesburg we successfully finalised meetings for office space in Bryanston, through the Global Entrepreneurship Network (GEN) and also held positive engagements with the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE), where we aim to raise over N$10 million capital to expand our award-winning operations to the big population markets of Kenya, Nigeria, Uganda, Ghana and across Africa. As a matter of fact, we are flooded with partnership requests in those African countries already so we are very excited to kick-start the Go Safe Africa operations in 2018 – and most significantly we are excited to fly the Namibian innovations flag across Africa through this truly Namibian award-winning brand. Kenya has Mpesa, Nigeria has Wonga and Namibia has Eenda Nawa.”
The expansion of the Go Safe operations into South Africa and across Africa was also warmly welcomed by the Namibian High Commissioner to South Africa, Veiccoh Nghiwete.
David added: “As a Namibian founded company that will operate in South Africa and across Africa, we are humbled and honoured to have received the blessing of our high commissioner in South Africa and his team during our courtesy visit to the Namibian high commission in Pretoria. He emphasised the need for more Namibian innovative companies to expand beyond our borders as the only means to survive the current tough economic times in Namibia and also as a way to generate much needed foreign currency. So we are very excited to enter the African market in 2018 but now hard work lies ahead.”