SA’s popular site Gumtree joins Project Isizwe in free Wi-Fi crusade

Project Isizwe seems to be raking up partners its grand mission to provide free information to low-income communities across South Africa. To help the startup achieve its vision, it will be partnering with one of South Africa’s most popular online classifieds sites — Gumtree.

A bit more than a week ago, Project Isizwe, boldly announced it will be rolling out more than 200 new hotspots across the City of Tshwane, South Africa.

The partnership between the eBay-owned site and Project Isizwe, founded by former Mxit CEO Alan Knot Craig, see both ventures and the City of Tshwane commit to make a positive difference using tech.

People within range of Project Isizwe’s Wi-Fi spots get 250Mb of data per day, and will have unlimited access to the curated content portal called Tobetsa. Among the free curated sites are Wikipedia, education portal Siyavula, mobile reading site FundZA, popular news sites, and of course Gumtree.

The partnership will see Gumtree’s business focused content available for unlimited use on Project Isizwe’s Tobetsa Content Portal.

Along with their comprehensive jobs portal, Gumtree also has tips for applying, hiring and interviewing, as well as templates for CVs, interview tactics and more, which makes them the perfect fit for the Project Isizwe jobs and employment section.

As reported by Times Live, Gumtree SA spokesman Estelle Nagel says that this partnership will help expand its already massive 9-million visitor user base. According to Project Isizwe, Tobetsa boasts 26 000 unique visits since late July.

Gumtree country manager also Johan Nel says that this move will help people get access to critical information via the site:

Our aim is not only to connect economically disadvantaged individuals to the internet for the first time, we also have the larger goal of connecting those individuals with opportunities such as 60 000 jobs registered on our site, or to gain free exposure for their own businesses by tapping into the platform and our user base.

By 2015 the free Wi-Fi project hopes to have the capacity for at least 3 million people across South Africa.