Burgeoning African E-commerce Industry Full of Opportunity

Africa has seen huge change since 2000 in the way people access information and do business electronically. The most championed accomplishment has been the widespread take-up of mobile phones. This has given birth to countless entrepreneurs and innovators who are using  phones to help people, do business and sell goods and services.

Not as quick to spread, mostly because of high cost and poor infrastructure, is access to the Internet. While Web access is taken for granted in many wealthy countries and is increasingly commonplace in many developing nations, Africa as a whole still suffers from poor infrastructure for access to the Internet. But this is changing by the month as  more undersea cables connect countries and bandwidth is increased (http://www.submarinecablemap.com/).

Africa’s population can be expected to at least double from 1.1 billion to about 2.3 billion by 2050 – and most will live in urban areas (Population Reference Bureau).

And incomes are rising. Africa is richer than India on the basis of gross national income (GNI) per capita, and a dozen African countries have a higher GNI per capita than China (Africa Rising).

According to the McKinsey Global Institute, “The incomes of these new consuming classes are rising even faster than the number of individuals in the consuming classes. This means that many products and services are hitting take-off points at which their consumption rises swiftly and steeply. By 2025 urban consumers are likely to inject around (US) $20 trillion a year in additional spending into the world economy.”

Research firm Jana (jana.com) – which specializes in emerging markets – studied the consumer preferences of people in Nigeria, Kenya and South Africa. They surveyed 600 consumers in each country, seeking to unearth what their preferences were when it came to using e-commerce services (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-commerce). E-commerce is the buying and selling of products and services over electronic systems such as the Internet and other computer-enabled systems. This is still a young industry in Africa and one ripe with opportunity for hardworking and innovative players. Many are starting to realize they had better move fast because this is a market that still has much up for grabs and is not – yet – dominated by mature players such as eBay or Amazon.

The survey uncovered five trends driving e-commerce in Africa. These trends address the unique conditions present in Africa and what challenges need to be met.

The first trend the firm identified is cash on delivery. This has become the main way people do e-commerce in Africa because of the lack of trust in the security of online payments. Cash is still king in the region. The second trend is having a proprietary logistics network. This comes in response to the poor infrastructure present in much of Africa. This has meant e-commerce companies need to take charge of the whole process of getting a good to the customer’s home. This is, of course, costly and places a big restraint on any new company in the e-commerce market.

The third big trend is one that reflects the reality of how people communicate electronically in Africa. Mobile phones are king, and this means e-commerce needs to be mobile phone-friendly or lose out on reaching many customers. The fourth trend is related to the fact Africa is still off the logistics route for much world trade. This means e-commerce companies need to set aside space for large warehouses to store the goods so that they are on hand when the customer wants them.

And, finally, the fifth trend is the importance of good customer service as the clincher for success in the marketplace. Word of mouth gets around if a company is not able to deliver on what is promised so it is important to have high-quality customer service to build trust, keep engaged with consumers and let them know problems are being resolved.

South Africa has emerged as the continent’s powerhouse when it comes to e-commerce, according to Jana. Successful players in that country include Zando (http://www.zando.co.za/) an online fashion store by Rocket Internet, MIH Internet Africa’s Kalahari online store (http://www.kalahari.com/) and entertainment and consumer electronics online store Takealot.com supported by Tiger Global. Research firm World Wide Worx (http://www.worldwideworx.com/) calculated that online retail in South Africa is growing by 30 per cent a year.

But South Africa cannot rest on its laurels: the survey found Nigeria is fast overtaking South Africa as its large population takes to the Internet. Impressively, Nigeria’s Government has pledged to expand broadband Internet access to 80 per cent of the country over the next five years.

In East Africa, Kenya’s Rocket Internet’s service Jumia (http://www.jumia.co.ke/) is now one of the top 100 online destinations in the country.

Jana also found there were various key areas for improvement for the e-commerce industry in Africa. One, was the importance of explaining to African consumers the basics of online shopping. Many respondents to the survey seemed confused about making purchases on the Internet and through e-commerce. They also showed low levels of understanding about payment methods and available financial products. And finally, one of the big obstacles to expanding the industry is improving delivery reliability.

But all these problems and challenges spell opportunity for innovators who can solve them and make some money too!

By David South, Development Challenges, South-South Solutions

Published: July 2013

Development Challenges, South-South Solutions was launched as an e-newsletter in 2006 by UNDP's South-South Cooperation Unit (now the United Nations Office for South-South Cooperation) based in New York, USA. It led on profiling the rise of the global South as an economic powerhouse and was one of the first regular publications to champion the global South's innovators, entrepreneurs, and pioneers. It tracked the key trends that are now so profoundly reshaping how development is seen and done. This includes the rapid take-up of mobile phones and information technology in the global South (as profiled in the first issue of magazine Southern Innovator), the move to becoming a majority urban world, a growing global innovator culture, and the plethora of solutions being developed in the global South to tackle its problems and improve living conditions and boost human development. The success of the e-newsletter led to the launch of the magazine Southern Innovator.  

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Kenya Reaches Mobile Phone Banking Landmark

 

Financial transactions and banking with mobile phones have been a Kenyan success story.

Now, one service, M-Shwari, has reached a significant milestone in the history of m-banking (mobile phone banking): it was able to record a billion Kenyan shillings (US $11,926,100) in savings deposits in a month after its launch in November 2012 and reached deposits of Kenyan shillings 2.8 billion (US $33 million) by February of 2013. This outstripped the Kenyan shillings 378 million (US $4 million) in loans lent by the service, reports Daily Nation.

M-Shwari is a mobile phone banking product that allows people to save and borrow money by phone and earn some interest too. The service offers small emergency loans to customers, offering a financial lifeline to people who would have been frozen out of financial services in the past.

There is no need to have any contact with a bank or bother with paperwork. And loans are instant because they are small.

Safaricom Chief Executive Officer Bob Collymore told the Daily Nation “Trends show that it has become more of a savings service than a lending service. This is what we intended since the beginning.”

As of February 1.6 million customers had used the service.

On top of this success, the pioneering M-PESA (http://www.safaricom.co.ke/personal/m-pesa/m-pesa-services-tariffs/relax-you-have-got-m-pesa) mobile phone banking platform developed in Kenya by Safaricom is set to roll out across India and help bring banking services to the country’s 700 million “unbanked.”

Both these developments are solid proof that innovation aimed at drawing in the poor into the mainstream economy not only works, it is profitable and exportable.

M-Shwari (http://www.safaricom.co.ke/personal/m-pesa/m-shwari/m-shwari-faqs) works like this: a customer can save as little as one Kenyan shilling to receive an interest rate of up to 5 per cent. If they want a loan, then they can borrow from 100 Kenyan shillings (US $1.19) to a maximum of 20,000 Kenyan shillings (US $238) for a processing fee of 7.5 per cent which will need to be paid back after 30 days.

By offering greater access to loans, M-Shwari s increasing competition in the banking sector and giving customers a choice.

It joins an ongoing revolution in access to credit for the poor. Powerful mobile phones enable individual depositors and businesspeople to organize their financial affairs and business needs on the phone. This is a revolutionary development in many places where people previously had to contend with poor access to financial services – or no access at all.

M-Shwari and products like it allow people to borrow, save and conduct transactions with family, friends, business partners and customers over their mobile phones.

M-Shwari is a collaboration between Kenyan telecoms company Safaricom and the Commercial Bank of Africa. It is being hailed as an example of how banks and telecommunications companies can cooperate to offer innovative financial products to the country.

For the unbanked in India, the initiative between Vodafone India (https://www.vodafone.in/pages/index.aspx) and ICICI Bank, India’s largest private bank, has started to roll out the Kenyan M-PESA mobile phone banking platform in India as of April 2013. They are hoping to open up access to banking to 700 million Indians who currently do not have bank accounts or access to banking facilities. The rollout starts in the country’s eastern regions of Kolkata and West Bengal (CNN).

It looks like access to banking services for the poor in the global South will soon undergo radical change with these large-scale initiatives.

By David South, Development Challenges, South-South Solutions

Published: May 2013

Development Challenges, South-South Solutions was launched as an e-newsletter in 2006 by UNDP's South-South Cooperation Unit (now the United Nations Office for South-South Cooperation) based in New York, USA. It led on profiling the rise of the global South as an economic powerhouse and was one of the first regular publications to champion the global South's innovators, entrepreneurs, and pioneers. It tracked the key trends that are now so profoundly reshaping how development is seen and done. This includes the rapid take-up of mobile phones and information technology in the global South (as profiled in the first issue of magazine Southern Innovator), the move to becoming a majority urban world, a growing global innovator culture, and the plethora of solutions being developed in the global South to tackle its problems and improve living conditions and boost human development. The success of the e-newsletter led to the launch of the magazine Southern Innovator.  

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Kenyan Book Company Brings Online Sales to East Africa

The Internet has revolutionized retail sales in many developed countries – and nowhere more so than for booksellers. The ability to offer an almost unlimited supply of books through a website is revolutionizing the way people shop and giving life to books long out of print or by unknown authors.

Kenya has recently gained a reputation for doing things differently in Africa and making great strides when it comes to using information technologies. And the next development in this story is the launch of a Kenyan online book shop modelled on the successful U.S. online bookseller Amazon (amazon.com).

A book boom is well underway across the global South. Literary festivals continue to expand, from Colombia in South America to India to Nigeria in West Africa, and so do sales of books, newspapers and magazines. While the publishing industries in developed countries despair at the impact of digital media on their profits, in the global South, rising prosperity and literacy are fuelling greater interest in reading and a growing print publishing industry. For example, India is experiencing 15-per-cent-a-year growth for its publishing industry, which is valued at nearly US $2 billion (Frankfurt Book Fair).

Kenya’s Text Book Centre (TCB) (textbookcentre.com), considered one of the country’s most reputable booksellers, has launched its own online book selling portal and its “eBook web store”. It is targeting readers across East Africa and sells books in 14 categories. Being Kenyan, it is taking an innovative approach that recognizes the large numbers of people who are doing all their transactions over mobile phones. The book portal allows customers to make purchases with their mobile phones using mobile money. This system uses the Kopo Kopo (kopokopo.com) software platform, which allows small and medium sized businesses to accept mobile phone payments.

Kopo Kopo was first developed in Sierra Leone in 2011, before being further prototyped in Kenya. Kopo Kopo wanted to develop an effective mobile platform to help small and medium sized businesses to better interact with their customers. The Kopo Kopo service was officially launched in February 2012 and is partnered with Safaricom, using its M-PESA Buy Goods service. It is being currently used by hundreds of businesses, from “salons to restaurants to office supply stores”, according to Kopo Kopo’s website.

As an added benefit, the Kenyan online book platform is joined by a new marketplace for thousands of African ebooks. This part of the service is called eKitabu (ekitabu.com).

EKitabu will be a big boost to the continent’s authors and also open up new opportunities for budding authors who previously would have struggled to get published and distribute their work. If the ebook web store follows the dynamic of online booksellers in more developed markets, then this ability to gain exposure for author’s work and find an audience could also attract bigger publishers and spark interest in international book deals for formerly obscure writers.

The Text Book Centre was founded in 1964 by two Indian business partners in Kenya, Mr. SV Shah and Mr. MJ Rughani, and is now considered the leading bookstore in Kenya, specializing in leisure and educational books, according to its website.

Headquartered in Nairobi’s central business district, it focuses on providing books for the educational sector and strives to be “East Africa’s leading leisure and educational bookstore and office support resource centre”. It also supplies to customers in Uganda, Sudan, Somalia, Malawi, Zanzibar and Tanzania.

By David South, Development Challenges, South-South Solutions

Published: March 2013

Development Challenges, South-South Solutions was launched as an e-newsletter in 2006 by UNDP's South-South Cooperation Unit (now the United Nations Office for South-South Cooperation) based in New York, USA. It led on profiling the rise of the global South as an economic powerhouse and was one of the first regular publications to champion the global South's innovators, entrepreneurs, and pioneers. It tracked the key trends that are now so profoundly reshaping how development is seen and done. This includes the rapid take-up of mobile phones and information technology in the global South (as profiled in the first issue of magazine Southern Innovator), the move to becoming a majority urban world, a growing global innovator culture, and the plethora of solutions being developed in the global South to tackle its problems and improve living conditions and boost human development. The success of the e-newsletter led to the launch of the magazine Southern Innovator.  

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Biogas Digester-in-a-Bag Brings Portability

Securing energy sources that are cheap (or free) and renewable can significantly reduce the cost of living for the world’s poor. The cost of fuel for essentials such as cooking and lighting can quickly eat up household incomes.

Gaining access to an inexpensive gas source that is also renewable can help people divert their income into other things, such as education and health care, improving individuals’ well-being and helping boost wealth.

Biogas (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biogas) is fuel made from biodegradable organic material such as kitchen, animal or human waste. It can be converted into gas either by being heated or using anaerobic bacteria to break down the material and turn it into combustible methane gas (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methane).

Most biogas systems are complex and large, involving an enormous domed biodigester.

But a clever solution from Kenya, the Flexi Biogas system (biogas.co.ke), is different. It is designed to be highly portable and scalable depending on a person’s needs. The Flexi Biogas system is a pillow-shaped PVC tarpaulin, measuring 6 metres by 3 metres. It comes in two parts: a plastic digester bag on the inside and a greenhouse-like plastic tunnel on the outside. The tunnel traps heat and keeps temperatures between 25 and 36 degrees Celsius.

Subjected to the heat of the sun, the environment inside the bag encourages microbes to digest the organic material – or substrate (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enzyme_substrate_%28biology%29) as it is known, releasing biogas bubbles and inflating the bag with methane. This gas is then sent through a PVC tube that can be connected to a gas-burning appliance such as a cooking stove.

Currently, most people use the biogas for lighting and cooking but it also produces enough gas to run agricultural machinery.

The Flexi Biogas digester sits on the ground and so is easy to observe and understand.

The Flexi Biogas system is designed, built and sold by Kenya’s Biogas International, which has sold 200 of the systems since 2011. In 2012, the company partnered with IFAD – the United Nations’ International Fund for Agricultural Development (ifad.org) – to install nine systems on dairy farms in Kenya. These Flexi Biogas systems use kitchen and human waste to produce electricity for lighting and to provide Internet service.

Cows produce 15 to 30 kilograms of dung a day (IFAD). By placing 20 kilograms of fresh cow dung into a Flexi Biogas digester it is possible to produce 1,000 litres of cooking gas – enough gas for a family of five to seven people. This amount of cow dung could also produce enough gas to run a 5 horsepower engine for one hour. The engine could also be connected to a car alternator to generate electricity to run lights, a computer or a television set.

A Flexi Biogas system costs US $410, including installation by technicians and all the extras including inlet and outlet pipes and a 15 metre gas pipe.

The cost of the system increased from the first prototypes. Initially, inexpensive plastic was used for the bags and the total cost for the system was US $180. But the makers encountered a problem with durability – the systems were prone to tearing and needed to be replaced after two years. Since then, they have moved to a more expensive PVC tarpaulin bag designed to last 10 years.

The makers point out that access to high-quality plastic and rubber in Kenya is difficult and the system’s costs could be brought down if they were manufactured in China or India.

The makers argue there are several reasons why the Flexi Biogas solution is suited to Africa. One is the difficulty of securing land tenure, necessary for the building of a permanent structure like a biodigester dome. It can also be a challenge to find skilled labour and get access to complex parts such as gas pressure regulators.

In a comparison between the conventional dome biogas digester and the Flexi Biogas system, IFAD found the average cost in Kenya for a dome system was US $1,000, compared to US $410 for the Flexi Biogas system. A fixed dome takes 21 days on average to set up while a Flexi Biogas system can be set up in a day. The Flexi Biogas system also turns the substrate into biogas faster and can operate at higher temperatures. IFAD found various advantages and disadvantages to the Flexi Biogas solution: it is relatively inexpensive, lightweight (10 kilograms), very portable, quick and simple to set up, and easy to operate. The disadvantages include being costly to make, easy to steal, and a relatively short lifespan.

Weighing it all up, IFAD still concluded that “the Flexi Biogas system is an affordable solution that provides household energy while making use of waste products that would otherwise add to emissions.”

By David South, Development Challenges, South-South Solutions

Published: December 2012

Development Challenges, South-South Solutions was launched as an e-newsletter in 2006 by UNDP's South-South Cooperation Unit (now the United Nations Office for South-South Cooperation) based in New York, USA. It led on profiling the rise of the global South as an economic powerhouse and was one of the first regular publications to champion the global South's innovators, entrepreneurs, and pioneers. It tracked the key trends that are now so profoundly reshaping how development is seen and done. This includes the rapid take-up of mobile phones and information technology in the global South (as profiled in the first issue of magazine Southern Innovator), the move to becoming a majority urban world, a growing global innovator culture, and the plethora of solutions being developed in the global South to tackle its problems and improve living conditions and boost human development. The success of the e-newsletter led to the launch of the magazine Southern Innovator.  

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Profile of African Innovators Continues to Rise

A mix of developments is proving that African innovators no longer need to see themselves as lone operators working in isolation. Awareness of the continent’s talent has never been higher and is grabbing attention from the world’s media. In turn, more and more resources are being made available – from funding opportunities to get-togethers where innovators can meet like-minded people, to ego-boosting praise that helps raise profiles and attract investors.

This summer saw the launch of a new publication called African Innovator Magazine (africaninnovatormagazine.com). It is a good example of how perceptions have switched to recognizing that the continent is awash with innovators who have a lot to say.

Billing itself as “Technology insights for Africa’s decision makers,” African Innovator interviews business leaders on the continent about how they are driving innovation within their organizations.

Launched at a dinner on July 31 in Johannesburg, South Africa (http://www.flickr.com/photos/innovationdinner/sets/72157630881776882/), the quarterly magazine – with its glossy production values, high-quality photographs and design – is a reflection of how far the information technology business has come in Africa. The first issue asks “What is Innovation?” and features a broad range of African technology innovators, from Nigerian tablet personal computer maker Saheed Adepoju (http://enciphergroup.com/about/) to one of the world’s best-known technology innovators, South African-born Elon Musk (http://elonmusk.com/).

Publisher Abby Wakama told IT News Africa that the magazine would initially be distributed in South Africa, with plans to expand into Kenya and Nigeria.

“Our aim is to grow the reader base and branch out into new regions,” Wakama said. “The vision is to be the premier voice of Africa’s larger ICT community, covering issues that impact on commerce, trade, industry and the lives of everybody who uses IT.

“Readers do have a choice of publications that talk about ICT that cover technology and products. But there are very few that have an inside track into innovation in Africa. There are not many publications that discuss how technology is making an impact in the lives of Africans.”

For innovators strapped for cash to take their ideas forward, there are several new Africa-based funding sources to turn to.

In East Africa, the Rwanda Innovation Endowment Fund (RIEF) (http://www.mineduc.gov.rw/spip.php?article21) is a collaboration between the Government of Rwanda and the United Nations. The Fund aims to promote research and development (R&D) of “innovative market-oriented products and processes in priority areas of the economy” to increase the country’s wealth and economic competiveness.

For Africans as a whole, there is The Innovation Prize for Africa (IPA) (http://innovationprizeforafrica.org), an initiative of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) and the African Innovation Foundation (AIF) (africaninnovation.org). The prize hopes to place African innovators and entrepreneurs at the heart of the development agenda. It will be awarded to innovators who develop new products, increase efficiency or find ways to do things better and save money in Africa.

Africa Review, published by the Nation Media Group in Kenya, is “a digital news platform” providing “smart insights on African news and to examine important social and political trends in the continent.” It recently came up with a list of 20 East African “bold young innovators to watch”.

The 20 were selected because all of them are working on mobile phone applications and are creating “life-changing mobile apps in health care, education, finance and agriculture.”

They include:

• Jamila Abass from Kenya, the founder and chief executive officer (CEO) for M-Farm (http://mfarm.co.ke/about), which is helping farmers get real-time retail prices for their products.
• Tanzania’s Erric Mutta, founder and CEO of Problem Solved Ltd, set up the MiniShop mobile phone application for small businesses to make accounting and inventory control easier and more transparent – in turn making it easier to access credit.
• Jessie Gakwandi Benimana runs Rwandan company Sail Ltd (http://sailltd.com/) and the Get-It application (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vU8SCfyzf9Q), which helps people to find restaurants in the capital Kigali.
• Everyone knows Africans like to tell stories, and Victor Miclovich from Uganda is helping them to do this online. His StorySpaces (storyspaces.net) website “builds on the age-old African tradition of storytelling” for the digital age.
• Tanzania’s Eric Lwambura is using technology to save lives during pregnancy. He is founder of Crystal Interactive Systems (CIS) (http://www.crystal-int.com/), which has developed a mobile phone-based application to assist doctors to detect problems during labour. It is designed for health centres that can’t afford more expensive and sophisticated equipment.
• Kariuki Gathitu from Kenya who founded Zege Technologies (http://zegetech.com/home/), is working on innovative ways to transfer money. His latest development is M-Payer, helping small businesses manage their payments.

By David South, Development Challenges, South-South Solutions

Published: September 2012

Development Challenges, South-South Solutions was launched as an e-newsletter in 2006 by UNDP's South-South Cooperation Unit (now the United Nations Office for South-South Cooperation) based in New York, USA. It led on profiling the rise of the global South as an economic powerhouse and was one of the first regular publications to champion the global South's innovators, entrepreneurs, and pioneers. It tracked the key trends that are now so profoundly reshaping how development is seen and done. This includes the rapid take-up of mobile phones and information technology in the global South (as profiled in the first issue of magazine Southern Innovator), the move to becoming a majority urban world, a growing global innovator culture, and the plethora of solutions being developed in the global South to tackle its problems and improve living conditions and boost human development. The success of the e-newsletter led to the launch of the magazine Southern Innovator.  

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