ITC publishes a study on e-commerce marketplaces in Africa

 The International Trade Centre (ITC) published the report Business and policy insights: Mapping e-Marketplaces in Africa. The research concludes that marketplaces are prominent across Africa, however there is still significant untapped potential. The continent’s 631 online marketplaces recorded 2.17 billion visits in 2019, only 8% of the traffic on Amazon. Moreover, ten countries, including South Africa, Egypt, Nigeria and Algeria, are responsible for 94% of all online business in the continent. The top challenge in accessing a marketplace, the report finds, is that it may be available just to sellers in certain locations. Only three of the ten international marketplaces examined in the report are open to sellers from more than fifty African countries.