Gishta Going Global

Moving Gishta into the Global Economy

To introduce gishta into the global economy, we propose using a website where the small farmers would be able to sell the fruit and other parts of the plant to buyers in other nations, namely the United States. Since few people will have previous knowledge of what it is in the US, we do not think that the number of consumers going online to buy gishta will be great enough to make a profit. Therefore, we propose a B2B approach, or selling the fruit to businesses that will then sell it to the consumers. This approach is the best because it will raise awareness about the product when people see it in their everyday stores, giving the venture a better chance at success. Once popularity increases, adding a B2C approach may be discussed. At the moment, however, we do not feel that it will be very successful.

E-commerce was chosen as the method to sell the gishta for several reasons. First of these is that it is known to be efficient. The overhead costs of owning a website is significantly less than any other type of business. Finally, there are practically no infrastructure conflicts with online businesses [1]. The website will make use of PayPal to make sure that all transactions are secure. Customers will be encouraged to buy from the site if they are able to do so in a way that is both trusted and familiar to them. This will also make the buying process more efficient.

Technology
In order to implement this plan successfully, the small farmers will have to have access to the internet, preferably high bandwidth connections. Ethiopia is one of several African countries that enjoy the benefits of a full internet connection, including remote applications such as telnet, email, and ftp [3]. The university in Addis Ababa has fiber optic network connections and in 2002 was working on a local network that would serve up to 30,000 people with 128 kbps connection. The Ethiopian Telecommunications Corporation (ETC), the internet monopoly of Ethiopia, also provides a few internet cafes, although they have closed several that were opened by individuals. Ethiopia has around 30 functioning internet cafes [11]. In 2005, the ETC offered Dial-Up internet services, Leased Line internet services, and “Shared DSL” which is a mix between the two [5].

In 2007, it was reported that Cisco was going to replace the broadband connections in Ethiopia for free. They said the project would take around a year to be completed. This would allow the internet to penetrate even deeper into Ethiopian society, letting it into a greater number of private homes. It will also become more widespread in rural areas [2]. With access to a computer and internet connections, the small farmers would only need to take a couple of classes before they were able to operate their ecommerce website successfully.