Launched this week in Kenya, Bubewa.com is a ratings and review platform for consumers in Kenya to rate and share their experiences about products and services and even evaluate their elected leaders.

According to Sam Gichuru, Nailab co-founder & CEO, “Reviews on Bubewa.Com are geared towards ensuring that consumers and the general public get value for their money by making more informed choices by the rates and reviews posted.”

The platform is free and open to all and users can sign up using their email addresses or Facebook, at the moment. Users earn points every time they review products.  Like currency, user points enable users to post a product or service to be reviewed by the entire community which then upvotes useful reviews.

To ensure transparency, items with more than 2 reviews remain permanent on the site. Using colour codes, Bubewa categorizes items from dangerous to amazing depending on how the supplier performs in the reviews. Any item or service with a below 2.0 rating is colour coded red meaning it’s dangerous, and users are warned to deal with at their own risk. The Orange asks users to be warned or cautious when dealing with a service provider or product. These ratings fall under the 2.5 point score.  A blue tag means the item or service provider is safe to buy or deal with while a green tag means amazing goods or service provider or leader.

Whether it succeeds or struggles like Yelp has, we don’t now yet but social media has become home of rating, reviews and rants and Bubewa might need an algorithm to pull rants, ratings and reviews from people’s social media platforms.

Amassing a strong and devoted user community is a plus for such platforms. Therefore Nailab will have to pay early adopters or heavily incentivize Bubewa users to keep coming and not to post their claims on social media but to Bubewa exclusively. Maybe running a loyalty campaign will do.