East Africa's youth encouraged to embrace e-commerce

The International Trade Centre (ITC) has urged East Africa's young people to embrace e-commerce and tap into $26m (sh95.85b) global online sales as the Africa Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) gets off the ground in 2021.

According to a press release, the ITC executive director Pamela Coke-Hamilton, online marketplaces could drive inclusive growth across Africa, with e-commerce likely to create as many as three million jobs by 2025.

She told participants at the Trade Beyond Covid19: Unpacking the AfCFTA for East Africa forum in Nairobi that, ditching outmoded business models for e-commerce would drive intra-regional trade and attract benefits including opening markets to otherwise isolated rural communities, servicing Africa's fast-growing consumer market, and offer women access to new business opportunities.

Coke-Hamilton, however, urged the AfCFTA members to remove obstacles in the digital space with synchronized regulatory approaches that check the fracturing of African states by technology giants, adding that the opportunities and challenges of e-commerce in Africa interplay with other policy issues.

It should be noted that while digital trade offers an innovative tool for industrial leapfrogging and income convergence, some African countries lack the legal framework and enabling environment for digital trade to thrive under the AfCFTA.

Additionally, some countries are also still grappling with a lack of adequate and affordable connectivity and thorny issues such as cybercrime and data privacy.

With a global digital order gradually taking shape, Coke-Hamilton said that young people and women in business needed to take note urgently of the disruption of old business models and adapt quickly.

"E-commerce can lower entry barriers and help connect MSMEs with global markets and value chains by providing the services needed to facilitate their exports," she said.

She said ITC plans to provide capacity building and advisory services that will enhance the continental business environment, strengthen national and regional trade support institutions and improve the competitiveness of MSMEs and women and youth-led enterprises under its One Trade Africa programme.

She alluded that agribusiness, services and green technology sectors are core to the success of the AfCFTA.

UNCTAD Secretary-General Mukhisa Kituyi also emphasised the vital role of the free trade area to boost growth opportunities across the continent.

According to United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) and Trademark East Africa, the implementation of the AfCFTA in Eastern Africa could result in welfare gains of $1.8b (sh6.6 trillion), a boost to intra-African exports worth more than $1.1b (sh4.1 trillion) and the creation of more than two million new jobs.

Sharing his perspectives bearing the experiences from the European Single Market, European Union Ambassador to Kenya, Simon Mordue said that experience has shown that small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) can benefit greatly from a larger common market.

"SMEs will prove to become the continental engine of economic prosperity because of the Africa Continental Free Trade Area, positively impacting millions," Mordue said.