Coronavirus pandemic boosts online trade in Africa

During COVID-19 lockdown, many companies in Africa discovered new ways to bring goods and services to their customers. Both large and small businesses benefit from the online trade following the pandemic. Expanding network connectivity across sub-Saharan Africa will provide digital services, which is now accepted by many of us. Only relying on Internet connectivity allows mobile banking, whatsapp chatting and video, electronic health, and e-educating.

This will mean greater access to essential services, including e-agri services, for a geographically disparate population. Sub-Saharan Africa has a huge population of cities-Lagos in Nigeria is one of the world’s fastest-growing towns, but the Internet can be smooth and sometimes disconnected, even in the center of Victoria Island.

Access to the Internet means that these people can save, invest, borrow money, obtain education, have access to basic health care and trade with larger markets; these are all essential for socio-economic advancement. In the past century, this had been a powerful driving force in Europe , North America and Asia for economic growth.

There is a lot of pent-up demand for internet services in sub-Saharan Africa.  Indeed, a substantial portion of mobile phones have internet and messaging capabilities. Mobile usage in sub-Saharan is more widespread than electricity – in 2016, The Economist found that while less than half the population has access to electricity, two-fifths own a mobile phone. In a Pew Research survey of six sub-Saharan Africa countries, a median of 41% used the internet occasionally or had access to an internet-capable smartphone – that compares to 89% of Americans.

There are now several mobile carriers in Africa, particularly in rural areas, that want to broaden their network coverage. Governments push for these infrastructural roll-outs because they recognize the two key tenets of their countries’ development are communications and renewable energy. Telecom technology has progressed significantly over the last 10 years, with specialist product development to meet rural telecommunication needs especially in terms of out-of-grid renewable energy, extreme temperature resilience and software-powered base stations, which allow masts to be almost anywhere.

Digital services, for example services for ridesharing that are required to have a physical component, could face slower adoption because of other Sub-Saharan Africa infrastructural challenges. The growth of such services is mainly restricted to cities. As an investor or contractor, it’s often a simple formula when you look for disruptive possibilities. Where does supply surpass demand? Telecom in Africa has a clear case, and government and large corporations are already making considerable investment. This is an interesting point as it is likely that the digital economy in Africa will fuel tremendous growth , creating new businesses and technology that will continue to dominate the world.