Africa not a ‘bankable’ option for e-commerce volume growth

Africa ticks all the necessary boxes to reach e-commerce targets, but its online consumer potential – and consequently, its inbound airfreight volumes – is being held back by one major impediment: a lack of individual bank accounts. According to Adrien Thominet of France-based sales and service agency, ECS Group, the financial services sectors of some African countries are woefully inadequate to encourage e-commerce penetration. Speaking at the recent Air Cargo Africa conference in Kempton Park, the French multinational’s CEO told attendees that “in some

countries in Africa, the penetration of people with individual bank accounts is as low as 20%”. Not having access to such a basic service – unlike people the world over, who take having a bank account for granted and regard it as a natural privilege – contributes to “having payment issues in many African countries”. Thominet added: “It’s a major headache and if left unaddressed, it will continue to constrain e-commerce growth on the continent.” A report by the World Bank details research conducted into “unbanked” population figures, telling a startling tale of bankable options simply not being in place for e-commerce rollout in many countries. In north-west Africa, the

situation is particularly bad with Guinea, Burkina Faso, Niger, Cameroon, Chad and, alarmingly, Egypt having personal account holder penetration of less than 15%. In sub-Saharan Africa, the situation is markedly better, with the percentage slowly progressing to 30%. Burundi and Madagascar are the only two countries south of the African equator where less than 15% of the population have no bank accounts. In some countries, like the Central African Republic, the situation is so bad that only 3.30% of the population have bank accounts. The World Bank report also states that “more than 20% of unbanked adults receive wages or government transfers in cash, and many people in

developing countries pay bills and school fees in cash”. Thankfully, the number of people obtaining bank accounts the world over is slowly curving upwards, with

the number of unbanked people having dropped below 2.5 billion at last count – when 700 million new account holders were recorded by the World Bank.