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E-Commerce

Cowema E-Commerce Platform

A Congolese e-commerce ecosystem that grew to 40,000+ users: a marketplace, a commission reseller app, and admin back-offices, with mobile money and delivery built in.

E-Commerce Full-Stack Laravel Mobile Kotlin
Cowema E-Commerce Platform

Overview

Cowema was a 100% Congolese e-commerce ecosystem for buying and selling new and second-hand goods, with mobile money and delivery built in, across Congo-Brazzaville. As co-founder and technical lead, I built it from the ground up into a platform used by more than 40,000 people.

It was never a single app. Cowema grew into a connected ecosystem: a consumer marketplace, a commission-based reseller app (Cowema VEC), and a suite of admin dashboards and back-office tools, shipped across web, Android and iOS.

The idea was simple: give ordinary sellers a way to reach buyers without spending all day at a physical market, and give buyers a safe way to shop from their phone. Making that work in Congo-Brazzaville meant building the payments, delivery and seller tooling that marketplaces elsewhere take for granted.

Faites de votre téléphone, un marché. (Turn your phone into a marketplace.)

Context and challenge

Building e-commerce for this market is not the same as plugging in a card processor and a courier API. A few realities shaped everything:

  • Card payments barely exist, so the platform had to run on mobile money end to end, with secure withdrawals for sellers.
  • Trust between strangers is the hard part of any used-goods marketplace, so buyers and sellers needed direct messaging, negotiation and identity verification.
  • Logistics are fragmented, so delivery had to be handled inside the product rather than assumed.
  • Sellers needed a low barrier to entry, which led to a commission-based reseller model so people could earn without holding stock of their own.
  • Everything had to be mobile-first, across Android and iOS, plus the web, on modest devices and connections.

The ecosystem

Consumer marketplace and classifieds (web and mobile)

  • Sellers create listings for new or used items across categories (fashion, electronics, beauty, automobiles, and more)
  • Buyers browse and filter by location, category and price, on the web storefront (cowema.org) or the mobile apps
  • Full product listing and storefront on the web, not just the apps
  • Direct buyer-to-seller messaging and in-app price negotiation
  • Seller profiles with ratings, reviews, followers and reputation
  • Referral program (parrainage codes), coupons and promotions to drive growth
  • Stories for product discovery
  • Delivery with upfront fees and fast in-city ETAs (often within a few hours)

Cowema VEC: commission reseller app

  • Independent sellers earn commissions by reselling from Cowema's catalog, no inventory required
  • Access to a broad product catalog to sell from
  • Real-time earnings and sales tracking
  • A community of sellers, turning everyday people into a distributed sales force

Payments and delivery

  • Mobile money (MoMo) payments with secure seller withdrawals
  • OTP verification, including delivery over WhatsApp
  • Platform-managed delivery so buyers receive orders without arranging logistics themselves
  • Order management for both sides of a transaction

Admin dashboards and back-office

  • Back-office tools to run the marketplace: manage the catalog, vendors and listings, and moderate content
  • Track orders, payments, mobile money settlements, deliveries and reseller commissions
  • Operational dashboards and analytics for the business
  • And more...

Reach

  • A web storefront (cowema.org) with full product listings, native Android app, iOS apps (marketplace and Cowema VEC), and internal admin back-offices
  • Grew to a base of 40,000+ users in Congo-Brazzaville

Tech stack

  • Backend and web: PHP / Laravel
  • Android: native, Kotlin and Java
  • iOS and cross-platform mobile: Flutter
  • Admin dashboards and back-office: web, on the Laravel backend
  • Payments: mobile money integration
  • REST API shared across web, mobile and reseller clients

What I worked on

Co-founded Cowema and led its engineering across the entire ecosystem. I designed and built the Laravel backend and API, the native Android application, the Flutter apps (consumer marketplace and the Cowema VEC reseller app), the mobile money payment and withdrawal flow, the commission logic for resellers, and the admin dashboards and back-office used to run the business. My focus was shipping something that worked on the ground in Congo-Brazzaville: mobile-first, mobile-money-native, and simple enough for first-time online sellers.

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