ICT
Encouraging innovation and growing E - commerce in Africa.
Professor Jean-Paul van Belle of Cape Town University’s Faculty of Commerce has won an international IBM Faculty award for developing an innovative toolkit to enable small businesses to break into e-commerce.
The project is designed for small, often cash-strapped African organisations that want to add an e-commerce component to their operations.
The system is cost-effective and simple to use, and will encourage more small businesses to take the leap into the world of online transacting.
This resource helps small enterprises set up their e-commerce venture through step-by-step guidance and exposure to IBM programmes aimed at small and medium enterprises and NGOs.
Companies start with a self-assessment test to determine their readiness, which also allows them to decide which ICT areas to focus on. Once these steps are complete, the toolkit provides resources to help small companies implement their strategy, with checklists, how-to guides, and other material customised for African conditions.
The toolkit will be available online, and on CD and DVD as well, all at no charge
A December 2009 report issued by internet application development company White Wall Web stated that South Africa was around four years behind the rest of the world in terms of online trading.
"We will probably never completely close this gap but we will continue to follow quite steadily," said White Wall Web MD Pete Flynn.
With the steady growth in the number of internet users in the country, as well as improved access to faster bandwidth, South African businesses should now begin to seriously plan their e-commerce strategies.
As an incentive, Flynn cited internet-based book and music vendor Amazon.com, whose online turnover is more than that of South Africa’s two top retail chains, Pick n Pay and Shoprite, combined.
In other parts of the continent e-commerce is slowly gaining ground. The Africa Business Source noted in a 2009 article that over the last decade Africa had faced a number of significant obstacles in the development of e-commerce, in technical, social and political spheres.
Political upheaval, inadequate infrastructure, huge international debt, armed conflicts and health problems are just a few of these stumbling blocks. The article singled out South Africa as the obvious top performer together with certain North African countries, but most of sub-Saharan Africa lagged behind.
Today there is a growing number of African companies that successfully use e-commerce, and many of them, said the article, offered mobile access to their facilities so customers can get to grips with the concept via a platform they are already comfortable with....Register to read more
Sources: Erasmus, N. MediaClubSouthAfrica.com, (2010)
