Yesterday’s post on the eCommerce success story of Indonesia sparked a lot of thought on how Africa can achieve the same success. There have been a few major eCommerce success stories in Africa, but those are mostly isolated to South Africa which has a much larger middle class and developed economy than the majority of African countries.
Where the success of the Indonesian example should have parallels is in countries that resemble the demographics and development of Indonesia – Nigeria and Ethiopia being two examples. However, eCommerce have struggled in both those countries. QZ wrote an article yesterday about this very scenario. Nigerian eCommerce companies are shutting down or downsizing all over the place. The major reasons cited in the article are assumptions that I wish QZ could dive into more. They include issues around consumer behaviour, market sizing, timing and trust. These all are likely influences, but probably not the reason. I think it’s more likely a business model problem. The companies haven’t figured out how to make money. Most of the companies there are cloning Western business models. Jumia, a part of Rocket Internet, is probably the most successful and
So this brings me back to an article I’ll leave you all