The liberalisation of the telecoms sector has boosted the economy. Access to telephony has become more democartised because of affordability. The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) figures showed there are over 130 million active subscribers in the country while mobile operators have provided mobile internet for e-commerce to thrive. LUCAS AJANAKU writes on innovations and challenges of e-commerce.
Nigeria and, indeed, Africa provides significant growth opportunities for players looking to have a sizeable bite of the emerging electronic or e-commerce cake.
Analysts say the growth percentages are expected to reach hundreds and even thousands in no distant time, but argue that the growth trajectory does not match the value it represents.
With consistent growth of e-commerce in the country and the African region with no sign of a slump, industry watchers say there is the prospect of a solid e-commerce expansion in the country.
It is too common to associate e-Commerce with popular sites such as Jumia, Konga, Amazon and other online retail shops. In Nigeria, it is a belief being held by a large number of people that when one wants to buy consumer items such as shoes or electronics or books, one could go online. It is also possible to book local and international flights and hotel accommodation online.
Of course, other sites allow people to search for jobs or properties or cars, but cannot really buy those items online.
Analysts ask if it then meant that e-Commerce is only for shoes and phones. The answer is no. e-Commerce properly done allows an organisation of any size to greatly increase its turnover and sales irrespective of the business or the goods being sold.
Chief Technology Officer, Computer Warehouse Group Plc, Mr. James Agada, said latest statistics showed that 66 million Nigerians are on Facebook, the popular internet social website. About 24 million Nigerians have smartphones that have internet capability, and internet penetration is at 50 per cent.
Mobile internet provided chiefly by service providers using the global system for mobile communication (GSM) licence, has played significant role in his respect as it is used in the country by men, women, children, teachers, students, businessmen and enterprises. The addressable market for any business that goes online literally explodes. The importer of shoes can sell to more dealers, the fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) seller could sell to the distributors, and the tailor could sell both tailoring service and ready-made clothes, while the event organiser or transporter can sell tickets, everything riding on the internet.
Initiative to boost e-commerce
According to Agada, the CWG Openshopen platform enables any one to sell anything online. Sales are not only about accepting orders. Information technology (IT) is also about collecting payments and making deliveries. With CWG Openshopen, these services are built in so that once you sign up, you can, if you want, begin to receive payments online and have your goods delivered to customers nationwide without having to invest in any other logistics for payments or delivery. Take for instance an FMCG that currently battles with a bank to help do collections and hires an army of order takers to input order details into its enterprise resource planning (ERP) system. The FMCG can replace the entire collection and ordering system by opening an online shop on Openshopen for her factors and distributors. They will order online, pay online and delivery can be arranged. Or consider a transporter who wants to run a cashless ticketing system. Simply put the tickets online and people can buy and pay and get their ticket numbers which can be verified from a phone.
He said: “The CWG Openshopen platform takes eCommerce way beyond the pedestrian selling of shoes and phones, and extends it into the best tool for increased market access. This is a deliberate design borne out of the determination of CWG Plc through her new CWG 2.0 initiative to democratize access to the technology of business.
“With 17.6 million small enterprises in Nigeria, extending eCommerce to the sale of locally made goods and services greatly expands market access for local content. This same role has been played by Alibaba in China. Today, Alibaba’s stock sells for $98-$100 per share. It will be interesting to see whether CWG shares will also trade at those levels in the nearest future.”
Challenges
A key stumbling block to the growth of e-commerce is power supply. Though there are innovative ways such as solar-powered chargers for mobile phones, inverters that could power PCs, power supply from the national grid continues to be a major issue.
Analysts say though the government has done all the right things in terms of reforming the power sector, they argue that as with the telecoms liberalisation, it will take at least another five years for the new owners of the successor firms of the unbundled defunct Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN) to get a control of people owing money and to start renewing the mass of obsolete infrastructure inherited from the power octopus.
Aside stable power supply, a new survey has highlighted other potential threats to the future of the internet within the next 20 years, to 2025, including surveillance and government interference.
The Pew Research Centre, a nonpartisan American think tank based in Washington, D.C., and providing information on social issues, public opinion, and demographic trends shaping the United States (U.S) and the world, canvassed 1,400 experts to get their view on the future of the internet.
Majority said they hope that by 2025 there will not be significant changes for the worse and hindrances to the ways in which people get and share content online today.
According to Pew, four net threats these experts fear: are: actions by nation-states to maintain security and political control will lead to more blocking, filtering, segmentation, and balkanisation of the internet; trust will evaporate in the wake of revelations about government and corporate surveillance and likely greater surveillance in the future; commercial pressures affecting everything from Internet architecture to the flow of information will endanger the open structure of online life; and efforts to fix the too much information (TMI) problem might over-compensate and actually thwart content sharing.
Former Director-General, National Information Dvelopment Agency (NITDA), Prof Officer Cleopas-Angaye said the global trend now is for governments to look for ways of controlling the internet for national security.
Chief Executive Officer, Teledon Group, Dr. Emmanuel Ekuwem said in view of the potential cyber attack on banks, telcos, payment cards, air traffic controller (ATC), there is need for government intervention in controlling the cyberspace.
He said Nigeria’s territorial integrity includes her cyber space and should be treated the way air, land sea borders are generously protected. He therefore urged the appointment of a cyber security chief just as there are army, police, navy and air force chiefs.
Britain has just determined that internet service providers (ISPs) block sites the government considers ‘terrorist’ or otherwise dangerous. This will grow. There will usually be ways to circumvent the obstruction but most people won’t bother.
According to Pew, a professor of Computer Science at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, U.S and architect of the Web, Jim Hendler, said: “If anything, it is privacy that will have to give way to openness, not the other way around… Repressive governments will be working hard to stop the spread of information. As today, there will be both good and bad news continually in that area, but over time more integration, access, and sharing will be a driving force.”
Pew added that Peter S. Vogel, Internet law expert at Gardere Wynne Sewell,U.S said: “Privacy issues are the most serious threat to accessing and sharing Internet content in 2014, and there is little reason to expect that to change by 2025, particularly given the cyber terror threats confronting the Internet users and worldwide businesses.”
Another issue is connectivity. But this is gradually paling into insignificance as there is a rising trend in retailers growing due to advances in this area. According to figures by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), 16 per cent of the African population has Internet access – up from 10 per cent it was in 2010.
According to the 2014 Mobile Media Consumption report released in February by InMobi, 83 per cent of consumers planned to conduct mobile commerce this year – up 15 per cent from last year’s figures. The study includes data from 14 000 users across 14 countries, including Nigeria, South Africa and Kenya.
