Automotive e-commerce company, Autochek has acquired CoinAfrique, a classified ad marketplace as the company expands its footprint across Francophone African countries.
Founded in 2016 by Matthias Papet and Eric Genetre, with a presence in Côte d’Ivoire, Senegal, and 10 other French-speaking African countries, CoinAfrique has grown to become the number one classified marketplace for Francophone Africa by enabling businesses and individuals to seamlessly buy and sell vehicles, electronics, real estate and other goods.
In acquiring CoinAfrique, the company said it is positioning itself to leverage the classified ad marketplace’s extensive database across Francophone Africa to facilitate auto financing for consumers and SMEs across this region to purchase their desired vehicles.
“Matthias and Eric are pioneers of the classifieds model in Africa and they have built an outstanding platform with many significant partnerships with car dealers, fintech platforms and other stakeholders in the Francophone automotive sector. They are joining the Autochek family with many years of business and infrastructure development experience across Europe and Africa and we are looking forward to leveraging their expertise to improve the automotive finance value proposition across the continent,” said Etop Ikpe, CEO and co-founder of Autochek
Matthias Papet, CEO and co-founder of CoinAfrique, said, “we are excited about the opportunity to drive the penetration of auto financing across Francophone Africa and to support the wider mission across Africa. We see many opportunities to unlock value for users across all the categories on our platform and to expand into new countries, and we are looking forward to leveraging Autochek’s market leading loans product and expertise to deliver more transformative experiences for our users.”
According to Autochek, the CoinAfrique team will join them will support the mission to make car ownership more accessible and affordable across the continent.
“With this acquisition, as well as the recent acquisition of Morocco’s KIFAL Auto, Autochek is doubling down on its Francophone focus to replicate the successes achieved so far in the English-speaking West Africa and East Africa region, as local teams are empowered to build for the nuances of their specific markets. “
Autochek has already has rolled out its operations in Ivory Coast and Senegal following the acquisition, with more markets set to be activated, including Benin and Togo, as the auto marketplace expands.
CoinAfrique classifieds ads marketplace is active in 12 Francophone markets whereas Autochek was previously present in Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, Ivory Coast, Uganda and Morocco.
