South Africa launches app to crack down on fake goods

The Consumer Goods Council of South Africa (CGCSA) has added features to enable the public to report counterfeit goods to the My CGCSA/CS1za app as part of its fight against illicit products in South Africa.

Speaking to Cape Talk, CGCSA CEO Zinhle Tyikwe explained that people selling counterfeit goods in South Africa negatively impact various aspects of the country’s economy.

“We are really concerned about counterfeit and illicit goods in South Africa because they have taken over the economy. Government is not getting its due taxes,” she said.

“Our members are retailers and manufacturers, who are legitimate producers, are not getting the full revenue from their products.”

“A lot of people are not aware that they are buying counterfeit or illicit products,” she added.

Tyikwe said manufacturers and retailers have known about the challenges of counterfeit goods for years, and the CGCSA wants to raise public awareness of the issues.

Moreover, through its My CGCSA/GS1za app, consumers can now scan product barcodes to verify whether they are legitimate or counterfeit and report them if they are found to be illicit.

“We have an app through which you can scan the product using the barcode. If the barcode isn’t legitimate, it’s going to tell you in the app: this barcode is not correct,” said Tyikwe.

“As Consumer Goods South Africa, through the GS1, we are a member of a 118-member organisation comprising companies worldwide who put all of the barcodes of their products in a registry we are using.”

“So, we are going to be able to scan the barcode and tell you who is the brand owner,” she added.

MyBroadband briefly tested the app on iOS. It requires users to register an account to report counterfeit goods, while users can verify products without registering.

The app appears to be very glitchy and basic.

The app has many pages, including the registration page, which has a black background and dark blue text, making it very difficult to read.

Our initial registration attempt failed as the app hung a page that appeared to be a buggy combination of the registration and login pages.

Upon closing and re-opening the app, we tried to sign in but were told that no account was registered with the information provided.

Our second registration attempt was successful, and we were able to log in. However, these issues continued from then on.

The app offers various features, including barcode verification and portals to report counterfeit goods and other crimes.

While the counterfeit good reporting portal works pretty well, it simply asks you to provide a location or submit a report anonymously before pushing you into a chatbot with pre-loaded prompts.

The main feature we wanted to test was barcode verification. The barcode verification option in the menu allows you to enter a barcode manually or scan it with your camera.

After allowing permission for the app to access the iPhone’s camera, the app moves to a camera capture interface. However, it didn’t appear to be receiving any data from the camera and just showed a black interface.

While the option to enter barcodes manually appears to work, it isn’t as seamless as simply scanning a barcode with your phone’s camera.