This is sadly the end of Naspers’ horizontal Classifieds business in Sub-Saharan Africa as it shuts down its OLX South Africa operations.
Visiting the OLX South Africa website, you get a banner stating that “OLX South Africa is no longer available. But not to worry, We can still help you find your new car or property” pointing you to its vertical Classifieds – AutoTrader and Property24.
Naspers has pulled out the OLX marketplace from South African app stores and deleted its Twitter and Facebook profiles.
When contacted, Sjoerd Nikkelen, general manager for Asia, Middle East and Africa at OLX Group, had this to say:
“Earlier today, we discontinued our OLX horizontal classifieds platform in South Africa, as we focus our customer proposition fully on our strong property and autos verticals in the country (Property24 and AutoTrader). This is ultimately an indication of the progress we have made in South Africa over recent years and symbolic of how we as OLX Group continue to adjust ourselves.”
The closure has been expected for a while after the seeming move by Naspers to divest from the horizontal classifieds business in Africa and focus in Europe and Asia.
It started way back in 2018 when the Naspers shut down its Nigeria, Kenya and Ghana offices and started operating the businesses remotely after five years of operation. In April 2019, it then entered an agreement to sell its operations in Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda to Jiji.ng. Later in June of the same year, the Kenya’s OLX offshoot entered into a partnership with Walie Holdings Ltd to become Jiji.ke
In September 2019, Naspers spun off a consumer internet unit, Prosus, for a listing in Amsterdam that made it the biggest European company of its type. With OLX brand under Prosus, it now focused on the European operations and in some parts of Asia.
OLX is still present in Portugal, Poland, Germany, Bulgaria, Ukraine, Romania, Russia, Spain, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan in Europe and Pakistan, Turkey, India, Indonesia, Brazil, Peru, Colombia, Argentina, Ecuador. It however stills operates in Egypt
Naspers launched OLX in South Africa in 2011, to compete with local classifieds platforms Bidorbuy and Gumtree.
