Purses in Nigeria

African e-commerce: social media and mobile wallets 12. Sergey Sheikhetov, Head of Qualitative Research for Sub Saharan Africa at Kantar, on the specifics of e-Commerce in Africa using the example of the Kenyan market. Jumia was founded in 2012. The company currently operates in 14 African countries. In 2018, its turnover was just under USD 1 billion. At the same time, losses in 2018 amounted to almost $ 200 million, and since 2012, Jumia has suffered losses of $ 1 billion. What caused such an overwhelming optimism of investors? The fact is that e-commerce in African countries is growing so rapidly that, according to some experts, in the near future it can seriously compete with both traditional forms of trade for the region and its modern formats. Moreover, it is possible that Africa will be able to move from markets and kiosks to e-Commerce, bypassing the stage of supermarkets and hypermarkets. Moreover, this has already happened in African history. So, not later than 10 years ago, African countries switched to mobile Purses in Nigeria  communications, while a developed fixed telephone network in the region never emerged. Internet commerce is developing rapidly on the African continent, but unevenly. In some countries, the development of e-commerce is going much faster. There is a direct correlation between the development of online commerce and the development of mobile payments. African experience shows that mobile money is a key infrastructure element for the rapid growth of online commerce. Let's see how this happens using the example of Kenya. Buyer in Kenya provides a shipping address in the UAE. The company transports containers with parcels to Mogadishu. In the capital of Somalia, parcels are loaded onto a truck in Nairobi As in Russia, the pioneers of e-commerce in Kenya were wealthy and educated locals who often traveled abroad and were accustomed to buying goods in expensive stores. As a rule, they already had experience of online shopping in America or the UK. Of course, they also had credit cards from international banks. Therefore, the only serious barrier for them was the need to communicate with the Kenyan customs. It is noteworthy that in response to these difficulties, an alternative parcel delivery service immediately emerged, bypassing customs. He worked as follows. A buyer in Kenya orders a product, for example on Amazon.com, and specifies an address in the United Arab Emirates as the delivery address (this address, of course, belongs to the illegal postal company whose services he intended to use). The company then charters the ship and transports containers with parcels to Mogadishu. In the Somali capital, parcels are loaded onto a truck that takes two to three days to deliver the goods to Nairobi. Well, already in the capital of Kenya, a courier brings the parcel directly to the customer's home. The essence of the business model was that there is practically no customs inspection in Mogadishu, and the border of Somalia and Kenya is not guarded in large sections. This service, of course, is illegal, but almost all wealthy citizens of Kenya know about it, and many resort to its services. Despite the fact that this business operates solely on trust, according to user reviews, parcel delivery is as accurate and fast as Fedex and DHL. B8. For the same reason, local online trading platforms developed very slowly. The only alternative to bank cards was to pay in cash to the courier, but this scheme is fraught with difficulties. First, sellers were extremely reluctant to trust their couriers to receive large sums of money. There was a high probability that the courier, feeling the cash in his hands, would decide not to return. Secondly, the couriers themselves refused to transport cash because of the danger of being robbed (and such a danger in the city, which is colloquially called Nairobi - “night robbery”, is more than real). Finally, payment on delivery was in principle inconvenient for sellers, as it encouraged a high level of customer abandonment. The situation changed radically with the arrival of M-Pesa mobile money. M-Pesa mobile payment service was launched by Safaricom in 2007. Today it is used by almost the entire adult population of Kenya. With M-Pesa, you can pay in a store or restaurant, send money from one phone to another, pay for utilities, and more recently, you can even transfer money abroad and pay in foreign online stores. B8. Why has the mobile money service turned out to be so convenient for https://jiji.ng/169-purses