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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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.<\/a> 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<\/em> 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