Western Union Seeks East and Central African Market
‘WESTERN UNION SHIFTING FOCUS TO TRANSACTIONS WITHIN AFRICA.’
INTRODUCTION
This article under review is taken from the outlook section of The EastAfrican newspaper as for the dates between 19th to the 25th September 2011. It is a Q&A article with Western union’s present regional director southern and East Africa, Karen Jordaan. It was chosen in line with other online articles published two weeks prior that informed of the change in strategy being adopted by the global money transfer company in terms of their operations within the African continent.
ARTICLE OVERVIEW
With the ever growing number of immigrants standing at around 250 million globally with 30 million of these being from Africa and better still 19 million of them being migrations within Africa and with the ever growing number people moving within the East African region for leisure, business or seeking job opportunities, it was clear that the potential number of transactions within the region was increasing and Western union identifying this decides to apply their marketing mix in terms of place or location by changing their strategy by focusing on the East African region and the African continent as a whole.
To cement their operation in the region, western union has taken to invest to train more agents to reach a wider population and enhance service delivery in the region. With over 23,000 locations in 50 African countries and only 3,600 of this being in the East African region, western union is facing a challenging ‘motor and brick’ situation where they have been unable to reach the 39 million Kenyans with most adopting informal ways of money transfer coupled with low penetration of mobile transfer in rural areas. The 700 locations in Kenya coupled with differing data as provided by the local government and international bodies has left western union without proper information of where to invest and that is why they are taking charge and repositioning themselves to grow in the regional
INTRODUCTION
This article under review is taken from the outlook section of The EastAfrican newspaper as for the dates between 19th to the 25th September 2011. It is a Q&A article with Western union’s present regional director southern and East Africa, Karen Jordaan. It was chosen in line with other online articles published two weeks prior that informed of the change in strategy being adopted by the global money transfer company in terms of their operations within the African continent.
ARTICLE OVERVIEW
With the ever growing number of immigrants standing at around 250 million globally with 30 million of these being from Africa and better still 19 million of them being migrations within Africa and with the ever growing number people moving within the East African region for leisure, business or seeking job opportunities, it was clear that the potential number of transactions within the region was increasing and Western union identifying this decides to apply their marketing mix in terms of place or location by changing their strategy by focusing on the East African region and the African continent as a whole.
To cement their operation in the region, western union has taken to invest to train more agents to reach a wider population and enhance service delivery in the region. With over 23,000 locations in 50 African countries and only 3,600 of this being in the East African region, western union is facing a challenging ‘motor and brick’ situation where they have been unable to reach the 39 million Kenyans with most adopting informal ways of money transfer coupled with low penetration of mobile transfer in rural areas. The 700 locations in Kenya coupled with differing data as provided by the local government and international bodies has left western union without proper information of where to invest and that is why they are taking charge and repositioning themselves to grow in the regional