A Very Nigerian Opinion on E-Commerce and Online Fashion Startups

Folake Shoga shares her opinion on the recent spate of tech startups and apps mean to serve Nigeria’s fashion and fabric industry. Two recent articles in Techpoint, the Nigerian online technology magazine, feature initiatives dealing with aspects of the clothing business. One is a startup letting studio space and equipment to makers, 360 Creative Hub; […]

African E-Commerce: Successfully Leapfrogging The Metrics of Fail

Postal networks are critical elements of the e-commerce chain, a UN report said, including home postal delivery as an indicator in a new global index to measure countries’ readiness to carry out business-to-consumer (B2C) e-commerce. ~ source By these metrics, countries on the African continent such as Nigeria rank 101st on the global index, far […]

Navigating the African Informal Retail Sector

Nigeria’s consumer market has captured global attention. A significant proportion of this emerging market opportunity is in the FMCG category. Due to historical reasons, 87% of this retail trade happens in the “unorganized” or “informal sector”.  The market is highly fragmented and inefficient. Yet due to the nature of the informal economy, most of this […]

How e-commerce leadership is driving innovative business in Nigeria

While it’s still under construction, there’s an unusual mall coming up in Nigeria. Reports say its aim is to combine the virtual and real shopping experience – retail outlets and shopping alongside with a bonded warehouse and ecommerce facilities. Nigeria’s retail opportunity has been garnering international attention; its economy surpassed South Africa’s last year to […]

Nigeria pursuing deeper understanding of informal sector; now estimated at 57% of rebased GDP

From the BusinessDay article dated June 25th 2014 Nigeria’s informal sector accounts for as much as an estimated 57.9 percent of the nation’s rebased Gross Domestic Product (GDP), Daouda Toure, United Nations resident coordinator/representative of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in Nigeria, disclosed on Tuesday. This, perhaps, makes the country the largest destination for […]