Bongohive will be hosting the Mauritius-based accommodation marketplace for a meet & greet July 1st from 18:00 – 19:30 hrs. To attend, please register here.

SleepOut.com started on a small Indian ocean island off the coast of Kenya and is now building communities of accommodation hosts in some of Africa’s largest metropolises. “From castles in Kenya to houseboats in Zimbabwe, SleepOut is a truly unique and made-in-Africa product. 

As part of the “Zanzibar to Lagos African Tour,” Johann Jenson (CEO), Paul Schwarz (CTO) and Ayako Bertolli (Head of Photography) will be speaking at the BongoHive. The 45-minute talk will cover a broad range of topics. SleepOut’s Johann Jenson will introduce the concept of the sharing economy followed by an overview of the company’s origins, their expansion across the continent and how they overcame payments, logistics and engineering challenges. A 15-minute question and answer session will follow the presentation.

Johann told BongoHive that they’re very much looking forward to meeting with tech community and potential partners in Lusaka. “In September 2011, SleepOut (known at the time as Lamu.org) built its first user-base on Lamu – an island of 4,000 donkeys and 20,000 inhabitants. By September 2013, SleepOut.com was available in 5 countries. Today, the team works with hosts in 56 countries and counting. With impressive growth in the tourism sector, Zambia is also slated to become one of our top destinations.”

“We want to share our stories and learn from the tech community in Zambia. We feel that it is very important that we spend time working closely with the tech community throughout Africa to better understand how we can contribute to the ecosystem. We know that community and social capital is crucial to our business so meeting other startups particularly those working on sharing economy products is of great interest to us,” Johann added.

The ‘Zanzibar to Lagos African Tour’ began in June on the Indian Ocean island of Zanzibar. The team is working in each destination with travel photographers and local accommodation experts. Their goal is to visit 10 top SleepOut destinations in Sub-Saharan Africa over a 12-week period.

Major stops along the tour include Lusaka, Dar es Salaam, Harare, Johannesburg, Durban and Lagos. Throughout the 3-month tour, the team also aims to meet SleepOut accommodation hosts and travelers while verifying hundreds of the coolest and most unique accommodation in Africa.