Today’s estimated African population of 1.1 billion represents about 15% of the world’s total. The gross national income (GNI) per capita in Africa is about one quarter of the world average gross national income and the total international B2C trade from Africa and the entire Middle East region represented only about 2.2% of the world’s total in 2013.
46% of marketers surveyed believe that e-commerce will be the most important digital service to generate increased revenue for African industry over the next five years.

Here is an overview of e-commerce in Africa in 2015:

• The value of the global B2C markets expected to rise from about 230$ billion in 2014 to 1$ trillion in 2020.
  The proportion of the population covered by 3G mobile telecoms technology has risen from 45% in 2011 to 69% in 2015 and this enables mobile commerce (m-commerce).
• Africa’s GDP was just 1.1% in 2012, or about half the levels seen in other emerging economies, and this has very positive implications for the potential growth of e-commerce on the continent.
• The African e-commerce market is expected to rise from 8$ billion in 2013 to 50$ billion by 2018.
• B2C e-commerce sales are expected to reach 2.5% in 2018 compared to 2.3% in 2015.
• Only 26.5% of the continent’s 1-billion-plus people are connected to the Internet, compared to a global average of about 45%.
• In Tunisia, Internet retailing grew at 113% in real terms over the four years from 2009 and internet retail sales are expected to rise more than double again by 2018. This is one of the highest growth rates in the Middle East and Africa region, exceeding those of Egypt (53.7%), Kenya (32.5%) and Nigeria (74.0%).
• Global B2C sales will double by 2018, the share of this trade going to Africa and the Middle East will barely rise, from 2.2% in 2015 to 2.5% by 2018.
• Receiving payment for goods and services can be a complicated problem in developing countries due to a lack of advanced financial infrastructure, and there is a common local solution is the use of cash on delivery.

A Graph Shows The Transaction Volume of Global Cross-Borde B2C, Domestic B2C and B2C % of total B2C transactions.