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The Emergence of E-commerce in Zimbabwe

What is E-commerce

E-commerce. The global pandemic has changed the way people shop as more and more people are resorting to the use of online shopping. And while Africa is not necessarily behind in the trend, people in Zimbabwe are still largely deprived of the availability and accessibility to digital goods.

However, there has been a research and development report that tells of an increase in demand for E-commerce stores in Zimbabwe. Some factors that have led to this rise include:

1) Improved Internet connectivity since 2010
2) A push from President Emmerson Mnangagwa
3) The untapped potential of the market.
4) The need for an alternative revenue stream as mobile money has dwindled.

The internet is currently accessible through mobile, landlines and public internet cafes, with more than 5 million mobile users in a country of 15.8 million people. While a large percentage of Zimbabweans have access to the internet, they still do not have access to credit cards or e-wallets and therefore rely on cash payment systems or bank transfers. However, with the introduction of E-commerce in Zimbabwe the number of people using credit cards, e-wallets and direct bank transfers will likely increase as secure online payment options become available. internet download manager şifreleri

Furthermore, the report by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) claims that although many people in African countries lack access to financial services that in itself does not mean that they are not interested in purchasing goods online.

In other words, E-commerce is a lucrative market but it is largely untapped due to security concerns, which could be a potential threat but also an opportunity for further development of a customer base. To this effect, the uptake of e-commerce in Zimbabwe is limited by low levels of trust and security concerns. Online payments are much more established in countries such as Kenya where mobile money transfer services such as M-Pesa have been widely adopted.

There are several reasons why Zimbabwe is slow to embrace digital payment options. The first is that many consumers in Zimbabwe do not have access to technology and the second is that most electronic payment services such as Vodafone M-Pesa and Airtel Money have not yet been rolled out in the country. Also, much of the banking infrastructure has been affected by sanctions which furthers hampered an already limited consumer base. However, there are a few initiatives that are working to bring us closer to digitization.

Given this establishment, Pamusika.net has positioned itself to fully take advantage of this recent development by offering a website and platform that provides an opportunity for customers and business to offer their products and services online. Pamusika.net is a dedicated Online Classifieds marketplace for the buying and selling of services and goods such as vehicles, electronics, fashion items, property, household furniture and goods.

lassified ads have several properties that make them well-suited for the Web:

they are a classic “pull” medium: customers seek out the classifieds when they decide to look for a used car or when they want to hire a house-keeper; most people don’t leaf through the pages just for fun
they are well-suited for computerized searching and sorting: you may want to look only for used BMW cars that cost less than R150,000 or are less than 3 years old, or you may only be interested in a red Z3
they are time-sensitive, but not on a day-to-next-day basis: you want to see all open offers, no matter whether they were posted today or yesterday, or even earlier. As soon as the advertised offering has been sold, the ad should be pulled and not shown to any more customers (a static listing wastes both parties’ time)
sellers can type their own entries directly into the ad database since they know what they are selling. Using the hypertext feature of the Web, ads can link to as much background information as necessary; cryptic but space-saving abbreviations go away (hard disks are cheaper than newsprint)
multimedia features can save both buyers and sellers time by allowing potential buyers to learn more about the offering before contacting the seller (just how cute is the puppy? — well, see the photo, or even the video)
Note how all of the properties that make classified ads suitable for the Web also make them unsuited for printed newspapers. The fact that classified ads are bundled with news in a single physical product has nothing to do with the inherent qualities of either product. In fact, there are no synergies between classifieds and daily news. There are benefits from associating hobby-related classifieds with hobby-oriented news coverage, but such coverage is usually better done by magazines (or specialized Web sites) than by newspapers.

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