Africa… latest frontier for consumer business

Rapid growth in population and urbanisation has continued to lead consumers within the African continent to purchase more goods and services, in a development that has made it easier for companies to reach consumers with products, services, and communications.

No doubt, Africa represents a large and growing opportunity for fast-moving consumer goods companies and retailers. While the continent remains a significant growth market that no consumer products business can afford to ignore, analysts believe its consumer needs represent an immense opportunity for companies to berth.

Interestingly, the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per household in Africa has more than doubled in the last 15 years with around 85 million households currently earning at least $5,000 a year, according to an Ernst & Young report tagged “Growing in Africa: Opportunities for consumer product businesses.”

While the key to success in sub-Saharan Africa remains the ability to focus on specific opportunity areas and develop differentiated, relevant offers that address substantial unmet needs, companies that can quickly establish a foothold or expand their presence are well positioned to capture the value at stake as the continent’s consumers increase their spending.

Tapping into this bulging consumer base, MoboFree.com, a social marketplace, recently announced that its total volume of items currently for sale in its marketplace was worth $526 million with projections expected to reach $1.5 billion by 2015.

With 3.3 million registered users, including 2 million in Nigeria and footprints in Zimbabwe, Uganda and Ghana, consumers tap into MoboFree.com is among the largest and most successful mobile social and trusted classifieds platforms in Africa, consumers are currently tapping into items such as phones, tablets and mobile devices, electronic devices as well as clothes, fashion and beauty items on its market place.

Neringa Kudarauskiene, MoboFree CEO and co-founder, says MoboFree is a social marketplace with a unique user-centric approach which allows buyers and sellers to obtain a large amount of personal information about one other that enables identification of whether or not a person is trustworthy.

While negotiating and communicating during the buying/selling process, Kudarauskiene states that the social marketplace allows its members to communicate and negotiate conveniently without leaving the platform.

“Africa is home to six of the ten fastest-growing economies in the world. Our strong performance once again confirms the success of our model and is indicative of the high level of activity in all markets in which we operate. We are now looking for new partners with which to share our exciting expansion plans as we see enormous opportunities arising in Africa,” Kudarauskiene says.

The MoboFree technological platform makes buying and selling online easy for any African user with any device, not only for PCs and smartphones but phones with small screens.

A peep into social marketing reveals the deployment of marketing strategies and techniques to achieve a social goal. Unlike traditional marketing techniques which deploy market research, product development, distribution, and demand creation, social marketing campaigns are able to encourage populations to purchase socially beneficial goods and services.

Anne Agbaje