This makes doing business in Africa unique and different as compared to the west. It will be about M-Commerce more than it is Ecommerce. Look at the numbers guys.....


I agree with that 1,000,000% :)

 
On Tue, Aug 17, 2010 at 11:06 PM, Joe Murithi Njeru <joe.njeru@gmail.com> wrote:
Hello Brainiac,

The report is but one source of information. With any business venture
you must carry out proper research to come up with a premise on which
your business plan will be based on.

Please note E-commerce includes payment options like mobile money,
direct debit, eft, etc... not just cards.

Let me answer your questions using multiple sources of information:

a.)
Banks A/C in Kenya as at May 2009 - 6.4M = 16% of 40M
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aWjqnCRC39w0&refer=africa
Visa Enabled.. conservatively at 40% which is 2.56M cards.(Though Equity
has 4M accounts - see below)

MPESA A/Cs in Kenya as at January 2010 - 8M = 20% of 40M
http://www.moseskemibaro.com/2010/01/16/equity-bank-partners-with-safaricom-for-m-pesa/


b.) MPESA moved monthly $300 million as at September of 2009.
http://mobilepayments.wordpress.com/2010/05/27/comparing-volumes-of-mpesa-kenya-vs-paypal-mobile-in-2009-monthly-estimate/
If this much is being moved via MPESA...

c.) How much time do you need to make a sale on an online shop? Check
these stats from Opera Mini about Africa -
http://www.opera.com/smw/2010/06/

"Kenya leads the top 12 countries of the region in page views per user,
with each user browsing 639 pages on average each month."

"The top 12 countries using Opera Mini in Africa are South Africa,
Nigeria, Kenya, Egypt, Ghana, Sudan, Libya, Tanzania, Ivory Coast,
Namibia, Mozambique and Mauritius."

If these numbers fail to sway you then I'm afraid nothing will.

I'm taking my chances and have been actively developing e-commerce
solutions for my clients and myself. I'm not going to wait for Kibaki to
say 'Ready,Steady Go'.

FYI:
http://www.capitalfm.co.ke/business/Kenyabusiness/IT-framework-needed-for-EA-Protocol-4544.html



-----Original Message-----
From: [ Brainiac ] <arebacollins@gmail.com>
Reply-to: Skunkworks Mailing List <skunkworks@lists.my.co.ke>
To: Skunkworks Mailing List <skunkworks@lists.my.co.ke>
Subject: Re: [Skunkworks] E-commerce in Kenya
Date: Tue, 17 Aug 2010 22:02:18 +0300

hi guys, i have been digesting the report initially with sceptism given
the figures i got but now that im done, i cant agree with it more, and
disagree with joes assertion with regard to critical mass.

Here is the raw data:

average internet usage:
daily -> 3.5%
Weekly -> 8.5%
Monthly -> 13%

Ok, now thats straightforward. that means that on average, 13 percent
(if youre wondering, ive done the average of the rural and urban usage)
of the approximate 4 million users browse the internet once a month, 8.5
percent browse at least four times a month and only 3.5 browse every
day.

Internet usage by demographic:
 15-17 years 10 percent.
18 - 24 years 21 percent.
25 - 34 years 19 percent.
35 - 44 years 15 percent.
45 + years 8 percent.

Internet usage:
here is a sample of thse polled of what they do online.
entertainment / games / music 54%
social networking 45%
email 42
shopping 11 %.

Now the questions i ask you based on the report:
What proportion of the population here, is :
a) banked enough to have means of transaction.
b) moneyed enough to buy and sell
c) online for long enough to engage in buying and selling
and finally,
specifically online to buy stuff.

my2cnts....


On Tue, Aug 17, 2010 at 9:39 PM, John Maina <mwasjunior@gmail.com>
wrote:
        Could it be that we are looking at the "critical mass" question
       from the wrong perspective? We have more online users than asia
       tigers such as Singapore, we have $3.6 Billion worth of mobile
       payments per year (paypal Mobile Global only has $600 million)
       all this money goes to purchasing goods and Services so why
       aren't we designing products that these users can actually use?
       Someone pointed me to Kalahari earlier..I agree its better than
       what we have in the market..but why do I have to wait 11 working
       days for a product?

       @alex mwega: For purchase of goods outside Kenya..paypal and
       Equity have some interesting stuff in the works.

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