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Rabawa’s emergence as one of Africa’s early social and video commerce platforms was driven by a clear ambition: to use technology to remove barriers to entrepreneurship and create new economic opportunities for Africans.
At the centre of that product-development journey was Epaphras Adelabi, who served as Product Strategy Lead and contributed to translating Rabawa’s vision into a product strategy designed around the needs of its users, particularly aspiring entrepreneurs, resellers and online sellers.
Following the successful rollout of its pilot model in April 2021, Rabawa rapidly attracted users, suppliers and industry attention. By May 2021, the platform had registered more than 5,000 resellers and 1,000 suppliers, demonstrating early demand for a new approach to digital commerce.
The company subsequently secured $163,000 from US-based Aptive Capital to accelerate the development and expansion of its video-commerce platform.
Behind the growth was a product strategy focused on solving real problems within Africa’s fragmented commerce ecosystem.
Turning the Vision into a Product
Rabawa was not simply attempting to build another online marketplace.
Its model was designed to allow individuals, including students, young people, stay-at-home parents and aspiring entrepreneurs, to establish online businesses without the traditional requirement for significant startup capital or physical inventory.
The platform gave resellers access to products from manufacturers and wholesalers while enabling them to leverage social media to promote and sell those products.
Adelabi’s contribution was centred on helping shape a product experience capable of supporting this model at scale.
His product strategy focused on understanding the different stages of the entrepreneur’s journey, from discovering products and accessing suppliers to promoting products, engaging customers and completing transactions.
This required thinking beyond individual features and considering how the entire product ecosystem could reduce friction for someone entering e-commerce for the first time.
“The opportunity with Rabawa was to rethink what it meant to start an online business. We wanted to create an experience where access to products, suppliers and customers was no longer limited by the amount of capital someone had available. Product strategy therefore had to be centred on accessibility, simplicity and scale.”
Designing for the African Entrepreneur
One of the most important aspects of Adelabi’s contribution was maintaining a strong user-centred approach to product development.
Rabawa’s target audience was not limited to established retailers. The platform was designed to serve people who may have had little or no previous experience running an online business.
That created a different product challenge.
The platform needed to make complex commercial processes easier to understand while providing users with the tools and infrastructure required to participate in digital commerce.
Adelabi helped connect these user needs with Rabawa’s wider business strategy, ensuring that product decisions were aligned with the company’s objective of expanding access to entrepreneurship.
Supporting Rabawa’s Growth
Rabawa’s early traction demonstrated the potential of the model. Within approximately one month of its pilot rollout, the company had attracted thousands of resellers and more than a thousand suppliers.
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The subsequent $163,000 investment from Aptive Capital provided additional resources to drive the company’s video-commerce strategy and expansion.
Aptive Capital specifically highlighted Rabawa’s approach to addressing unemployment, product availability, logistics and market-access challenges across Africa.
For Adelabi, this represented an opportunity to translate investment into product growth.
His role involved helping ensure that Rabawa’s product roadmap remained connected to the company’s strategic objectives: increasing accessibility, improving the user journey, strengthening the connection between suppliers and resellers, and creating a product capable of expanding into other African markets.
“Investment is only valuable when it can be converted into meaningful outcomes for customers. Our responsibility from a product perspective was to make sure that every stage of development brought Rabawa closer to becoming a platform that entrepreneurs could rely on to start and grow their businesses.”
Product Strategy as a Driver of Economic Impact
The significance of Adelabi’s contribution extended beyond technology.
Rabawa’s business model was explicitly connected to the broader challenge of unemployment and underemployment in Africa. The company stated its ambition to empower at least one million unemployed or underemployed Africans with their own businesses by 2023.
This meant that product strategy had a direct relationship with the company’s social impact ambitions.
Every improvement to accessibility, usability, product discovery, supplier connectivity and the selling experience had the potential to make entrepreneurship more attainable for another group of users.
Adelabi therefore approached product development not simply as a technology function, but as a mechanism for creating economic opportunity.
“A great product should solve a real problem. At Rabawa, the problem was bigger than e-commerce. It was about access, to products, markets, suppliers and opportunities. Our goal was to use technology to make that access available to more people.”
Building a Scalable Social-Commerce Ecosystem
Rabawa’s model combined social commerce, video commerce, supplier access and logistics into a single ecosystem.
The company’s ability to attract more than 5,000 resellers and 1,000 suppliers during its early rollout demonstrated the potential of this approach.
Adelabi’s product strategy contribution helped the company think about how these components could work together as a scalable experience rather than as disconnected services.
His work helped align product vision, user needs, market opportunities and business objectives, supporting Rabawa’s transition from an early-stage concept into a platform with ambitions for regional expansion.
The $163,000 investment from Aptive Capital subsequently provided capital to accelerate that journey, with Rabawa positioning itself to become a significant player in Africa’s e-commerce ecosystem.
A Lasting Product Philosophy
Adelabi’s contribution to Rabawa reflected a broader philosophy that continues to define his approach to product leadership: technology creates the greatest impact when it is designed around real human and economic problems.
At Rabawa, that meant building for the entrepreneur who wanted to start a business but lacked the capital to purchase inventory; the student looking for an additional income stream; the individual seeking an opportunity in the digital economy; and the supplier looking for access to new markets.
By helping shape the product strategy around these users, Adelabi contributed to Rabawa’s broader mission of using technology to make entrepreneurship more accessible.
Rabawa’s ambition was to change how Africans participate in commerce. Epaphras Adelabi’s contribution was to help turn that ambition into a product strategy capable of scaling the opportunity.
