Born in South Africa – a country with widely publicised challenges in creating employment for most of its citizens – M4Jam was established to bring together individuals who sought work and organisations that needed tasks completed.
M4Jam’s mission statement is to revolutionise lives in Africa through technology. The company’s primary mission was to create hope, financial stability and economic inclusion by leveraging the scalability and simplicity of a digital platform to provide the most significant number of South Africans with jobs and skills.
M4Jam focuses on these two core functions: mobile training and micro-tasks. Both are coordinated and delivered via mobile devices to bring both educational training and short-term employment opportunities within reach of South Africans – the majority of whom have mobile phones capable of supporting the M4Jam platform.
The result of basing M4Jam on this widely used mobile phone technology is that jobbers can quickly complete training (gig economy workers registered on the M4Jam platform) anywhere, at any time, making the learning platform incredibly flexible and accessible.
Once jobbers have received the training, they are required to take on particular types of jobs, and they can search for and take on short-term tasks in their communities, for payment which is again facilitated by the M4Jam platform. Airtime, cash or a combination of both can be paid to jobbers, stimulating local job markets and providing much-needed income in a country with a highly exclusionary formal employment sector.
M4Jam is therefore linking jobbers with income opportunities and allowing jobbers to grow their skills, work experience, and CVs every time they complete a task. The positive spin-offs of jobbers using the M4Jam platform include users becoming more employable, becoming specialised at specific skills of their choice, and gaining dignity by being able to earn an income.
Many jobbers go on to establish their own businesses based on work experience and purpose gained through M4Jam while continuing to learn and work through M4Jam even while working elsewhere.
The platform’s list of registered jobbers makes a strong statement about its inclusionary ethos: individuals from marginalised communities. In particular, unemployed female youth – in rural areas with low skill levels can now earn income from work for corporate clients that are deliberately targeting marginalised groups for financial inclusion. The win-win scenario also provides corporate clients with the opportunity to conduct market research and plan routes to market in communities that are otherwise difficult to access.
Given M4Jam’s high level of focus on South Africa’s most pressing social needs, it is no surprise the platform won the MTN App of the Year in just its second year of existence, 2015. In the six years since then, M4Jam has gone on to win further domestic and international awards, including being shortlisted for a Unilever Global Development Award and winning a World Summit Award from the United Nations’ technology agency, recognising the platform’s power to deliver social upliftment against a background of Covid-19 and related economic challenges.
What will the next seven years hold for us? M4Jam has now turned its sights on Africa, aiming to expand across the continent, connecting with businesses across Africa to provide more opportunities for particularly unemployed youth to make an income.
Seven years in a digital world is a lifetime! Looking back at the history and heritage of M4Jam, it is incredible how far the platform has come in harnessing the power of digitalisation to solve social problems.