Nigeria’s eCommerce potential put at over $10bn - Report

With eCommerce potential put at about $10 billion in Nigeria, the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) says the country is home to about 74 million Internet users, going by November 2014 subscriber statistics. According to a report by Nigeria’s Guardian newspaper, the growth profile of Nigeria’s Internet users may have placed the country above South Africa, Kenya, Egypt and others, as the leading eCommerce destination on the continent.

It added that InternetStat, a platform that shows Internet World Usage Statistics for all countries and regions of the world, admitted that Nigeria still has the highest number of users, followed by Egypt, Morrocco and Kenya.

It noted that the largest percentage of Internet subscribers are found in small economies such as Seychelles, where as much as 37 percent of the population has Internet access (while in South Africa this value is 11 percent and in Egypt it is eight percent).

According to the report, a study conducted by Ipsos, a global market research company, on behalf of PayPal showed an expectation by Nigerian consumers to conduct more shopping online.



Though, Ipsos assumed there are over 50 million Internet users in Nigeria, it said that 65 percent of users already shop online and another 24 percent of users expect to do so in the future.

However, from a regional perspective, the study showed that Nigeria is without a doubt a significant ecommerce nation leading in the amount of potential and existing online shoppers about 89 percent, compared to South Africa’s 70 percent and Kenya’s 60 percent.