Morocco, Egypt, Kenya reshape the African ecommerce hotspot network - report

Morocco and Egypt are Africa’s most advanced markets in internet penetration, which reached more than half of the population in these countries, as of 2014, according to the `Africa B2C E-Commerce Market 2015` report issued by the market research company yStats. Online shopper penetration stood at below 10% in these countries, though especially in Morocco, the number of users buying over the internet has grown significantly.

In Egypt, a particular characteristic is significance of the social network Facebook, which not only generates traffic for online merchants such as Souq.com and Jumia, but is also cited by online shoppers as a website for direct placement of orders.

Kenya is Africa’s leader in all aspects of mobile. Mobile connections account for almost all of internet subscriptions in the country, while the number of people using mobile payment services has been growing each year to reach a significant double-digit number in 2014. Still, the country’s ecommerce market is smaller than that of some other African countries, although ranking first in mobile shopper penetration together with Nigeria.

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