The State of Ecommerce in Africa

There’s a really interesting conversation brewing over at Google’s Africa community that’s all about the state of ecommerce (or lack thereof) in Africa. Here’s a few of the highlights from the thread:

The original poster, Obum, asked:

One main challenge for online business I’ve found in sub-Saharan
Africa, for at least those who have access to the internet, is that
they cannot buy goods online because banks there do not issue credit
cards. Even the few banks that do, their credit cards are not accepted
by foreign merchants. There are students who want to buy books online
but cannot because they don’t have credit cards.

Do you think there is anything Google could do with the banks in these
countries like Ngeria and or with Merchants to make credit cards
popular and acceptable?

To which Luckie Eddie repsonds:

I know in a lot of countries there are moves towards being able to pay
through your mobile phone. Basically you enter your mobile phone #, I
believe it sends you a message asking to confirm the purchase, and
then the transaction goes through if you apply the confirmation. The
charge appears on your phone bill like any other charge. Is this sort
of payment method evolving in Africa

comolor syas:

I believe the bone of contention here is whether infrastructures
especially within sub-Saharan region are able to support online
transactions.

my own comment:

It might be interesting to develop a way to create a method for pre-
paying some type of debit system for sub-Saharan Africa. This isn’t
ideal but for now it might work

Someone from Google, the group moderator, responded:

Please bare in mind that systems like Checkout or Paypal don’t solve
the basic problem – how do you get money into and out of these
systems? For that, one still needs a credit card (or the ability to
electronically debit a bank account).

I won’t post all the entries here, but I encourage you to join the Google Group and join the discussion for yourselves.

VISIT THE GOOGLE AFRICA COMMUNITY