I just received a press release that Ringier Africa and One Africa Media (OAM) have come together to create ROAM, a joint venture business that will consolidate their respective online classifieds ventures in Africa. This sort of consolidation seemed inevitable to me given that this is a space that was highly fragmented without a clear leader on a Pan-African basis. I am curious to see what will happen next given that Nasper’s OLX seems the likely target behind this major move to create a behemoth of sorts in ROAM for Africa’s still nascent but fast growing online classifieds space.

ROAM will represent OAM’s Jobberman, Brighter Monday, Cheki, BuyRent Kenya & PrivateProperty Nigeria and Ringier Africa’s Expat-Dakar, ZoomTanzania, & PigiaMe. ROAM’s Pan-African footprint currently covers Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda and Senegal. OAM’s CEO Justin Clarke will become the Acting CEO of ROAM.

Since it was founded in 2010 by Justin Clarke and the late Carey Eaton, One Africa Media has aggregated and grown Africa’s largest marketplaces in employment, auto and property. Apart from the assets that form part of the deal, OAM is also a stakeholder in the South African-based Private Property South Africa & Safari Now. OAM’s largest investors and shareholders are Tiger Global Management and SEEK.

Ringier Africa, established in 2011, is a leading diversified digital media company in Africa – with a focus on content, classifieds, e-commerce and digital agencies. In content it runs the leading West African news platforms Pulse.ng and Pulse.com.gh and its pan-African digital agency network is called Ringier Digital Marketing (RDM). In e-commerce, Ringier Africa recently announced the founding of the Ringier Africa Deals Group with partner Silvertree. Ringier Africa is fully owned by Ringier AG, Switzerland’s leading international media company.