TAELI Mofelehetsi, a diploma in Accounting and Business Studies student at the Institute of Development Management (IDM) says online shopping could soon be the next big thing in Lesotho.

Mr Mofelehetsi runs Qiloane e-Store, a platform meant to provide e-commerce services for different entities and products. Qiloane e-Store was launched in April this year starting off with vegetables before adding meat, cosmetics and household cleaning products.

Mr Mofelehetsi told the Lesotho Times on Monday that thrives on marketing and selling local produce in Lesotho and globally.

“We are currently working on getting more products onboard and also expanding to other districts,” Mr Mofelehetsi said.

He said the initiative was meant to promote online shopping which is currently in line with the National COVID-19 Secretariat NACOSEC regulations which promote social distancing and cashless transactions.

The store lists products on its website and clients can easily navigate around and add products they want to purchase into their basket and proceed to checkout before adding their details and placing an order.

“At Qiloane e-Store we exclusively market and sell local produce because we understand that by promoting and selling local produce, we’ll be growing our economy and simultaneously creating jobs.”

He said increasing demand for local produce is bound to force producers to increase their production and thereby create jobs along the value chain.

“This will create jobs and increase our buying power. It will also increase market demand and a fast and large circulation of taxable currency contributing to the growth of the economy.”

He said while his vision was to promote local produce globally with the intention of exporting it, the platform also offers business development consultancy services.