JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) – Uber launched in Ivory Coast\u2019s commercial capital Abidjan on Thursday, part of its expansion into African markets with low levels of car ownership and limited mass transport.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The ride-hailing firm is facing competition from Estonia-based Bolt, which takes a smaller cut from drivers and plans to double its service in South Africa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Although Uber, which is also facing regulatory clampdowns elsewhere, operates in 16 cities in sub-Saharan Africa, mostly in South Africa and east Africa, its presence has so far been limited in west Africa, aside from Nigeria and Ghana.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Abidjan, a commercial hub of nearly 5 million people, was a \u201cperfect fit\u201d, Uber said in a statement, adding that more than 50,000 people had tried to use its app there in the past year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThis means that for the thousands of taxi operators in Abidjan, there will be new clients for every single driver, in addition to the number they already have now,\u201d Alon Lits, Uber\u2019s general manager for sub-Saharan Africa, said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Uber has experimented with new services in Africa, including ferries across the lagoon in Nigeria\u2019s traffic-clogged megacity of Lagos, in a bid to woo the continent\u2019s fast-growing population.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
An Uber executive told Reuters in June that it was also in talks with regulators in Senegal about launching services in the capital Dakar.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) – Uber launched in Ivory Coast\u2019s commercial capital Abidjan on Thursday, part of its expansion into African markets with low levels of car ownership and limited mass transport. The ride-hailing firm is facing competition from Estonia-based Bolt, which takes a smaller cut from drivers and plans to double its service in South Africa. Although Uber, which is also… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":136,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3928","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3928","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/136"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3928"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3928\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3929,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3928\/revisions\/3929"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3928"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3928"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3928"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}