‘Nigeria, 14 others generate 80% of Africa’s GDP’

Jumia forecasts 55% smartphone penetration by 2020

Nigeria and 14 other countries are currently generating over 80 per cent of Africa’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP).This is according to Jumia Nigeria in its 2017 African Mobile Trends study, presented on Tuesday, to herald the commencement of the Jumia Mobile Week, which starts from April 24 to 30.

The eCommerce platform, informed that Nigeria, has 18 per cent higher Internet penetration than the whole of Africa. Listed Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt, Mozambique, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Cameroun, Rwanda, Uganda, Tanzania, Kenya and Senegal as the other countries with higher GDP on the continent. Wikipedia puts Africa’s nominal GDP at $3.3 trillion.

The Chief Executive Officer of Jumia Nigeria, Juliet Anammah, said with the current Internet penetration rate of 53 per cent (97.2 million users) Nigeria has a much higher penetration rate than across Africa.

According to her, the third white paper presentation from Jumia, which highlights mobile trends across Africa and specifically Nigeria, affirmed 2016 projections of the country’s continuous increase in mobile Internet connectivity.

This, she said informed Jumia’s decision to make this year’s mobile week bigger and more exciting with discounts on all brands of mobile phones up to 50 per cent.According to her: “About 71 per cent of website visitors on Jumia use their mobile phones. This is in comparison to 53 per cent of Jumia African customers. One of the main vehicles of this mobile trajectory is the increasing adoption of the smartphone device by consumers. As predicted in our 2016 report, smartphone adoption continues to rise in Nigeria.”

She disclosed that mobile phone category continues to be the most popular among Nigerian shoppers on Jumia, both in terms of the number of items sold, and in terms of revenue generated.

Anammah, who put Smartphone adoption in Africa at 28 per cent and forecast a 55 per cent penetration by 2020, noted that it sales jumped up by 394 per cent between 2014 and 2016, mostly driven by an increasing range of smartphones price points.

This trend, she explained is also driving e-commerce with average price for a smartphone on Jumia is $117, down from $216 in 2014 as well as drop in the share of sales of basic feature phones from six per cent in 2015 to four per cent in 2016 while the share of smartphones on the website increased.

According to her, the mobile week will showcase launch of various smartphones from Jumia’s Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEM) partners.Anammah said, “The study takes a look at how the market has democratized mobile Internet use, the consumer behaviours driving increased smartphone adoption and the role of mobile brands, mobile operators and m-commerce in creating a synergy of an enhanced customer experience.”

She revealed that In terms of mobile Internet browsers, customers use to access Jumia, stressing that 50 per cent of customers in Africa come onto Jumia’s mobile site with Google Chrome.

In Nigeria, She put the number at 28 per cent, stressing that the Opera mini browser is much more popular, with 41per cent of the mobile traffic to Jumia Nigeria coming from Opera mini.

“One reason for this could be that countries with higher levels of income have been found to have more users accessing the internet with heavier browsers like chrome – which typically have higher system requirements. Opera mini is a lighter browser in terms of data usage and is popular among new mobile internet users who have lower incomes and can’t afford costly internet data packs.

“A recent report from Opera determined the savings on mobile data costs for Opera mini users in Nigeria has amounted to about $198 million (N39.5 billion) over a 10-month period, due to its data compression technology. This is a clear example of the ripple effect that customer enjoy when a slight change is introduced by one of the digital ecosystem players,” she stated.

Anammah said one of the immediate key priority of Jumia is to enhance the desktop user experience (which accounts for almost 30 per cent of Jumia’s traffic and almost 40 per cent of orders placed) by delivering a progressive web application that bridges the gap between conventional web pages and native mobile applications, to give customers a faster web and desktop experience that includes functionalities like push notifications and the ability to browse while offline.

One of the partners, the Head of Marketing, Imose Mobile, Dayo Adefila, said the firm has done very well in the Nigerian mobile market through the Jumia platform, being listed on the top three performing mobile brand in 2015 and winning best seller in the feature phones category this year.

Adefila, who called for a concerted among vendors to curb the influence of counterfeiting in the market, stressed the need for better management of the country’s online space.