What is Open Gambia
Last updated
Last updated
What is Open Gambia?
OGa is a pioneering Open Network mission in The Gambia which aims to establish a countrywide, multi-sector Open Network for digital commerce. Enabled by the Beckn Protocol, OGa aims to facilitate discovery of services, service fulfilment, and payments within this network.
Keeping in mind, that retail and commerce is one of the core growth engines for The Gambia, OGa is launching retail as its first focus sector to kickstart a grounds-up movement.
OGa will not only revolutionise the way businesses operate and customers engage and bring even the MSMEs online, but will also supercharge employment creation, further accelerating the economic growth.
As OGa takes root in the country, the possibilities are immense across sectors such as hospitality & tourism, mobility, healthcare, education & employment, among others.
What is an Open Network?
Open Networks are open, peer to peer decentralized networks for pan sector economic transactions. To deep dive into Open Networks, it is prudent to recall the design of the internet and email to bring out the underlying principles of interoperability & decentralisation in place of intermediation. In the case of email, the sender can be on any platform and the receiver can be on any other platform, yet they can discover each other based on a simple email address through an underlying protocol called Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP). What if we were to replicate this for digital transactions? One way is to unbundle the traditional, monolithic platform structure with central intermediaries, and enable buyers and sellers to be on any platform of their choice; and still discover, transact with each other (e.g. booking a ride, booking a stay, order groceries, etc.). But for this, there is a need for a protocol, like SMTP, which can enable two platforms to talk to each other and carry out economic transactions.
And this is the core purpose that the open source effort called Beckn protocol serves.
Beckn protocol (or Beckn in short) is a set of lightweight open specifications to enable dynamic discovery of any type of resource (taxis, restaurants, stay, people services, medical services, various types of products and services), engage, and conduct digital transactions between a consumer and providers of such resources. It enables creation of a peer-to-peer decentralised network consisting of independent buyer-side and seller-side platforms.
Beckn Protocol is fully an open source specification (licensed under Creative Commons) available in a public workspace (GitHub), and collectively governed by a global community of volunteers and participating organisations.
When multiple Beckn-enabled applications come together, it creates interoperable open networks which enables unlocking massive flow and exchange of value across many connected platforms. It allows combinatorial bundling of experiences across categories, e.g. booking a cab and getting a coffee delivered to the moving car, or buying multi-modal single-ticket for a combination of cab, metro and an e-bike. It also redistributes the cost and risk across the value-chain, improving the efficiency and throughput of the overall system. With open networks, for the small businesses, the cost of customer acquisition and servicing goes down multifolds.
Open Gambia Network with its initial focus on retail aims to ensure every business small or big can offer services and transact digitally.
OGa for retail will enable B2B & B2C discovery and transactions of food and beverages, groceries, mobility services and more, by enabling platform-agnostic interoperability.
By eliminating the need for individual contracts among network participants, various e-commerce platforms, logistics providers, and payment gateways will be seamlessly connected through OGa.
This means that local businesses that offer food, beverages, groceries, and mobility services will be able to establish an online presence and transact digitally, without any hassle.
Benefits of Joining Open Gambia
